


So The Story Goes

by PhysicsExploit



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon), 悪魔城ドラキュラ | Castlevania Series
Genre: Animal Death, Awkward Romance, Battle Couple, Canon-Typical Violence, Corpses, Eventual Sex, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Masturbation, Monster Hunters, Prophecy, Slice of Life, Slow Build, Travel, Undead Animals
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-17 22:28:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 109,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28732716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhysicsExploit/pseuds/PhysicsExploit
Summary: The Hunter and the Scholar are on a long journey from reluctant comrades to friends, to partners, to lovers. On the way there, they have to deal with not only some classic Castlevania enemies, but also a prophecy, a whole lot of mundane chores, their own unwise habits and impulses, and worst of all, tedium and random people.Roughly one third of the story is spent in season 2 with bits of season 1, then it progresses to cover the time between seasons 2 and 3. The "Eventual Sex" bit is going to take a while to get to.
Relationships: Trevor Belmont/Sypha Belnades
Comments: 40
Kudos: 51





	1. Clean-Up Crew

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't usually publish work that's not at least 99% done but this time, I've been writing for so long, I'm pressuring myself to just go and finish the story by starting to upload it bit by bit. There's going to be 16-ish chapters, it looks like, but like I said, I'm not done yet. 
> 
> Heads up if you're not into unpleasantness related to injuries, death, and decay ranging from insects going to places they shouldn't to things dying violently, because this fic does have those, although I don't mean to linger on them or get too gushy with them. Also, some chapters have people being sexist because, well, 15th century Europe. Some unsavoury things of sexual nature are maybe implied, but there will be no explicit depictions or discussions of sexual abuse, people being disgusting to minors, things of that nature. And anything sexual going on with Trevor and Sypha ends up reading as relatively wholesome, I hope.

It was such a nice, unseasonably warm weather for a nap under a tree, Trevor thought. It was still a bit nippy when there was a breeze but the bone dry air currently stood still and the sun's rays were warm despite being weak. And the cherry on top was, this was _his_ tree he was resting under – thankfully, it had been far enough from the explosive winds from the arrival of Dracula's castle that it had been spared the fate of hundreds of less lucky trees around the Belmont manor. Trevor would have honestly been quite beside himself with grief should Dracula have stolen his chance for a proper reunion with this old friend.

Unfortunately, just as the vampire hunter thought he was going to fall asleep, he started feeling a little ill at ease. Something was approaching, its steps quiet but not quiet enough for him to miss them. Listening for them and trying to hear everything, he realised it had been a while since he had taken a breath, so he hastily resumed taking long, slow breaths, as if he was asleep. His act wasn't convincing enough though, it seemed, because as soon as his stalker was within pouncing distance, it said to him:

'Aren't you _cold_ , Trevor?'

The vampire hunter clicked his tongue and slowly opened his eyes, squinting at the figure in blue standing in the way of the sun.

'Well I wouldn't be just peacefully sitting here if I was, would I Sypha?' he asked.

The Speaker magician threw her hands up, shrugging. 'I wouldn't put it past you to freeze to death just because you're too stubborn to go back to get your cloak,' she remarked.

'Says the person stubbornly wearing a robe that's missing a sleeve,' Trevor quipped.

'It's still cold to me and this is all I have!' the magician defended herself. 'At least it doesn't stink to high heavens like your cloak does.'

Trevor noticed that she was looking around her, appearing increasingly worried. He was going to ignore that and continue commenting on her robe instead, but before he could do that, Sypha piped up again. 'Where... are the horses?' she asked worriedly. 'I thought you brought them out with you.'

Trevor shrugged. 'They're around here, somewhere. Couldn't have gone far,' he grumbled. He then smirked and said, 'Anyway, did you come here to do more than just comment on what I'm wearing? Or, did you just get lonely exploring my family's literary treasures again?'

Sypha glanced at him briefly before returning to scanning her surroundings for the horses. 'I was looking through Dracula's library this time, actually,' she said matter-of-factly. Then, quite innocently, she added: 'Also, I came here to tell you that dinner's almost ready. But Alucard is such an amazing cook, I'm now debating myself over whether I should just not say anything and tell him you're not hungry. More food for the two of us.'

'Oh hell no,' Trevor growled and began pushing himself up to his feet. 'Nobody steals my food!'

'Is that so?' Sypha asked with a sly grin, immediately giving up on looking for the horses. She spun around on her heels, and finished with: 'Then, you better hurry and find those horses. Before I, you know, eat your portion, too.'

With that, she began sauntering back towards Dracula's castle, leaving Trevor to just stare at her back, astonished by her audacity.

'H-hey!' he barked after her and grabbed the horses' leads hanging from a nearby branch.

He scanned his surroundings like Sypha had done, only to find... Yeah, no horses. Anywhere. Just trees and the occasional shrub as far as the eye could see.

'Uh, Sypha?' he called out, a genuine tinge of concern infiltrating his voice. 'Could you just– ... Could you seriously just help me find them?'

Thankfully, it didn't take very long to locate the two gaunt grey-white geldings, somehow the best horses that had been available to them in Greşit: they had been very close by, actually, just quietly grazing behind a fallen vine-covered tree trunk that had hidden them. They didn't put a fight when they were put in leads, either, but that didn't stop Sypha from chiding Trevor when they started walking the horses back to the castle.

'This wouldn't have happened if you had just hobbled the horses,' she reminded the man.

'Ugh, no way am I hobbling the poor lads,' Trevor said in disgust. 'They're not feeling well and they've been through enough discomfort for an entire lifetime. Besides, they hadn't gone far.'

Sypha rolled her eyes, smiling. She then looked down at his hand. Being side by side, each holding their horse on a lead with the outwards-facing hand, she could reach down and grab Trevor's wrist.

'Let me see those bandages,' she said and held his palm up for herself to see.

Trevor rolled his eyes as well, and he too was smiling, but a little more tentatively. He side-eyed the Speaker magician quietly as she examined the bandage she herself had tied.

'Yeah, this needs to be changed as soon as possible,' she stated, frowning at how soiled the fabric had become.

Trevor clicked his tongue. 'We'll run out of bandage at this rate,' he pointed out.

'We haven't even really looked around the castle for more yet,' Sypha retorted. 'There's probably some, somewhere. There's a lot of clean fabric we can tear up, at the very least.'

'Okay then...?' Trevor drawled as Sypha let go of his hand. He glanced his friend's clavicle, neck, and shoulder area, remembering how the Speaker magician had stripped down a little so he had been able to dress her wounded shoulder. 'So, since we just _have_ to be so diligent about changing bandages,' he said wryly, 'surely you also want me to redress your–'

Trevor flinched. Though Sypha had let go of his hand, she hadn't given up on holding onto him: she had just slid her arm under his and so, they were now walking arm in arm.

'Redress my shoulder?' the magician questioned whilst he hesitated. She seemed oblivious to what was actually making Trevor uncomfortable. 'I don't grab things with my shoulder so it doesn't get as dirty as quickly. It'll be fine for a while longer,' she said matter-of-factly.

Trevor swallowed and looked straight ahead – he had been dreading this. Speakers were big into physical displays of affection, he knew, but he swore Sypha was actively seeking out opportunities to be touchy-feely with him. Currently, she was not even just holding his arm, she was leaning into him a little so her breast brushed against his elbow. This could no longer be a coincidence, could it? She wasn't constantly hanging onto Alucard, was she? Just him. But again: Speakers. Also, Trevor was quite aware that he had become a foreigner to human decency and affection to a degree unusual to all but other unloved dregs of society – who was he to determine what kind of display was casual and normal and what wasn't?

In short, Trevor desperately wanted to address his suspicions but could think of no way of doing it without sounding presumptuous about it. Thus, he began to just... blab uneasily about something else entirely.

'Found any mummified cats in the Hold yet?' he asked, doing his best to sound casual.

Sypha gave him an inquisitive sidelook and snickered. 'No. Should I be looking out for them?' she inquired.

'Er, well,' Trevor stammered while avoiding looking at his companion. 'Don't tell Alucard about this, but... maybe? We did use to have a whole lot of cats.'

Sypha looked up at him and cocked her head to the side. 'Really?'

'Yeah, always at least ten at a time,' Trevor confirmed.

He turned his gaze up to the sky and squinted, trying to look like he was reminiscing instead of avoiding eye contact with the magician.

'The one I remember best was this one cat named Goblin _,_ ' he went on. 'A big, fat, mean bastard he was. Always bullying other cats into dropping whatever they'd caught and eating it all up. And he was nasty to people, too, scratched the hell out of me a few times.'

'O... kay,' Sypha said, unsure what to say.

It was unclear to Trevor if him rambling on about cats was welcome or not so he glanced at her quickly as he cleared his throat into his fist. She did seem at least a little curious, so he went on.

'Anyway,' he grunted, still holding his fist in front of his mouth, before he took to defending his family's honour. 'We had all these cats for a reason, alright?' he asserted. 'My grandfather was absolutely livid when he found out that mice had nibbled at one of the monster heads he had preserved. After that, whenever someone saw a mouse down in the basement, he ordered us to toss cats at the problem until it went away.'

'Alright?' Sypha said. 'Sounds pretty logical to me,' she assured him.

'Oh, but the thing is, Sypha,' Trevor continued in a grave tone, 'cats sometimes sneaked into the basement on their own if the door was open, without anyone knowing they'd gone there. And the basement could stay closed for _days,_ unless someone heard the cats yowling inside.'

Trevor lowered his voice further so he was almost whispering: 'Also, cats have this habit of hiding themselves somewhere quiet so they can die in peace, so...'

'Oh,' Sypha said and fluttered her eyelashes. ' _Ohhhh._ So what you're saying is...'

'What I'm saying is,' Trevor interrupted, leaning a little closer to her ear, 'I wasn't joking: there's an actual, regrettable chance that the Belmont collection _does_ feature a mummified cat, or few.'

An incredulous titter escaped Sypha's lips as she looked at her friend in dismay.

'That's _awful_ , Trevor - poor cats!' she blurted out, just barely holding back a giggle.

'I know, but again, don't you _dare_ tell Alucard about this!' Trevor hissed. 'If he _has_ to find out, I want it to happen by him finding one of those bloody things on his own, when we're far away from here. Imagine the look on that vampire bastard's mug when it happens and I'm not here so he can't even rub it in my face!'

After a brief pause, during which Sypha no doubt conjured up this image, she snorted but quickly stifled her reaction. Whilst looking away from Trevor, she straightened her back and cleared her throat.

'That's not funny,' she admonished him, trying to sound aloof.

She and her flushed cheeks weren't fooling Trevor, though.

' _Oh come onnnn_ ,' he goaded her, smirking and nudging the Speaker with his elbow. 'Yes it is, you _know_ it is.'

'Nope,' Sypha denied, a hint of a titter making her voice waver.

Trevor kept mercilessly teasing his friend, coming _very_ close to making her crack, up until they reached the perimeter of the castle, arriving at one of the back entrances to the humongous structure: the stables courtyard. There, as soon as Trevor laid his eyes on a pile of ash and sooty horse-like skeletons, he lost any semblance of mirth. Sypha noticed this but she didn't say anything, just gave him a look of sympathy and let go of his arm, knowing that he was about to go open the heavy double doors to the stables.

After the doors were opened, the two walked in with their horses, the vampire hunter first and then the mage second. Sypha stayed behind her to close the doors, then followed after Trevor and led his horse to the stall next to where the vampire hunter was placing his. Having finished locking up his horse first, he spent a moment scanning the stable floors with a look of faint disgust until Sypha came to his side.

'Thinking about those monster horses again?' the Speaker asked him.

'Mmh. Yeah,' Trevor mumbled, still looking at the floor and the many reddish-brown stains dotting and streaking it.

'Blessing the river really was a pretty brutally efficient move, if that's really what happened,' Sypha said, impressed. 'I bet whoever did it was pleasantly surprised – they couldn't have expected the castle itself to take a dip in it.'

Trevor clicked his tongue. 'I really could've gone without having to deal with this mess, though,' he grumbled. 'I almost felt bad for some of these bastards, trapped in here while the floor got flushed with _death.'_

'Hmm, yes,' Sypha agreed and followed the bloodstains down the long stable corridor with her gaze, going past many, many, _many_ freshly empty stalls. 'I have never seen anything try so hard to run without legs.'

The two soon finished their business in the stables and headed to the kitchen and dining area. There, Alucard was already sitting at the table, waiting for them.

'Hmh, about time you showed up,' the half-vampire said.

Trevor paid him less mind than the food he had prepared and set on the dining table: a pot of hearty pork stew, made of a pig that Alucard had butchered and the wild herbs and vegetables Trevor and Sypha had foraged off the Belmont lands. Just like all of the dhampir's cooking thus far, it smelled delicious. Just as the vampire hunter was about to give a rare genuine compliment to Alucard and sit down to eat, however, his attention was pulled away.

'Is something wrong, Sypha?' Alucard suddenly asked. 'You seem a little... _off_...'

 _Shit_ , Trevor cursed within the confines of his mind and turned around to look at his friend. Of course, she was blushing and actively avoiding looking at the half-vampire in a very suspicious fashion. Utterly hating the idea that she might crack _now,_ possibly spilling the beans about the cats or him having lost the horses, he decided to step in before Alucard could milk anything out of her. He pointed his thumb at her and, with remarkable ease, said:

'Sypha fell down and it was the funniest thing I've ever seen.'

It took a moment for his words to sink in Sypha's mind, allowing for a blessed moment of ignorance which Trevor used to his advantage: quickly and boldly, he stepped towards the table and pulled a chair from underneath it as if he hadn't said anything. By the time he heard the Speaker gasp and felt her shooting daggers at him, he had already sat down.

'Anyway, let's just eat,' he said, completely ignoring her. 'I'm starving.'

'Hmm. Yes, let's,' Alucard agreed, no doubt thinking that he was being merciful by ignoring what Trevor had revealed.

Thus Sypha, who was still regaining her composure, had two choices: either she would raise a commotion by bickering with Trevor just as they were about to have their meal, or she would let the issue go. Judging by her strained expression, the former was quite tempting to her but, after gritting her teeth and glaring at Trevor for a moment, she steeled herself and went with the latter. Despite being completely incenced by her friend's betrayal, she sat down by the table with a smile, albeit obviously forced.

That's when the fuming and plotting for revenge started. Trevor couldn't help but to be absolutely chuffed to see it: Sypha was bloody adorable when she was up to no good. He was only delighted, then, that after Alucard started telling her about something he'd found in his father's collection of books, the mage started _kicking his feet_ under the table.

Acting like he was above engaging in childish behaviour like that would only infuriate her further, Trevor knew. Of course, he did just that, then: he merely ate, sipped on wine, and beamed rays of saintlike patience down on Sypha, who struggled to be discreet with her kicking. He was going to pay for his impudence pretty hard, he figured, but he was also certain it was going to be so very worth the hassle.

Unfortunately, Alucard just had to ruin his high with a sudden change of topic.

'By the way, how were the horses?' he asked abruptly, turning his attention to the vampire hunter.

Sypha turned to him as well, scowling. 'He lost sight of them again,' she tattled in a low voice.

Trevor grimaced and gestured at her to cut it out. 'For two minutes, _at most_ ,' he lied, then quickly moved on. 'Anyway, they're alive, they're eating, they're shitting...' he ran down the list of things that horses do.

He was about to continue, but Sypha cut him off. 'They have mostly recovered from us overworking them to get here, as far as I can see,' she said. 'But still, it's better to be safe than sorry. I wouldn't start having them pull more than their own weight for another two days, at least.'

Trevor, not knowing enough about horses to add anything to that, just shrugged his shoulders. Alucard raised an eyebrow at Sypha before he hemmed softly and turned his attention to the vampire hunter.

'Oh no...' he lamented in a voice as facetious as he could manage, 'the vampire hunter is forced to suffer the indignity of being a guest at a vampire's castle for a couple more days. Whatever shall he do?'

Trevor, who had _only_ once or twice complained about how he was stuck at this miserable labyrinth of a castle, hemmed back and shot a glare at the condescending dhampir. Just to show that he wasn't going to grace him with an answer he then merely stuck a chunk of pork in his mouth with exaggerated deliberateness. While he was busy with that, Sypha pointed the Belmont heir with her spoon and spoke up.

'If you're in such a hurry to leave, how about I hitch the wagon to you and have you pull me and the horses?' she suggested with poorly feigned innocence. 'Just until they feel better, of course.'

'Oh you'd like that, wouldn't you,' Trevor said with a snort, mouth half full.

'She absolutely would,' Alucard chimed in without hesitation. 'And you would do it, too, if she was insistent enough about it.'

Sypha gave Trevor a snide look and snickered at him while he did a double take. 'Sorry, come again?' he asked Alucard, not quite believing the insolent half-vampire had really said what he had just said.

Alucard's lips curled into a lopsided smirk as he brought his glass of wine up to them. 'You heard me, Belmont,' he said and took a sip.

' _Pish!_ ' Trevor exclaimed, offended. 'Slander and lies.'

Sypha and Alucard dared to laugh at him, the snooty twits. While Trevor would have loved to grill them for why they thought he would go so far to do Sypha's bidding, they just gave him a taste of his own medicine by just ignoring his huffiness and pushing on.

'Do you even know where to go when you get to leave, though?' Alucard asked, turning to Sypha, who was chewing on a mouthful of food. 'Did you and your people agree to meet somewhere?'

'They told me where they are going,' the magician responded after swallowing. 'With me gone and just one wagon, they're going to need the help of another Speaker caravan to get by. Thankfully, we saw one on the way to Greşit: they were on their way to Lacul Vulturilor. That's probably where they're still at.'

A chill went up Trevor's spine as soon as he heard this. He sat up straighter and scowled at Sypha, asking: ' _The Bottomless Lake?_ The eagle witch's place?'

Somewhat startled, Sypha returned his scowl with a questioning, annoyed look. Trevor paid it no mind, instead demanding to know: 'Why there, of all places?'

'The Eagle Guardian is not a _witch_ , Trevor,' Sypha corrected him irately. 'Also, the group was escorting some people to go see her.'

'Oh for fuck's sake,' Trevor cursed under his breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. ' _Some people,_ Sypha?' he repeated. He went on in a condescending tone: 'Let me guess, some incredibly shady people, with a sob story about how, say, their kid is sick and the only thing that'll heal him is just a _little_ _bit_ of spit from the balaur that sleeps in the lake?'

'They weren't shady,' the mage denied. She was about to elaborate, but Trevor interrupted her.

' _Right_ ,' he scoffed.

He saw a flicker of cold fury in Sypha's eyes at this point, before he went on with the rest of his sentence. He could have backed down, but for some reason, perhaps because he wanted to prove he wasn't her patsy, he didn't.

'The next thing we know, we have some vampire alchemists recreating the two legendary vampire treasures and we have a whole new vampire king on our hands,' he griped. 'All thanks to the Speakers needing to help bloody everybody.'

Hearing this, Sypha's scowl turned into something that could have murdered people. Finally, Trevor realised: after his shenanigans from earlier, this wasn't him just running her patience to the ground, he was actually kicking it while it was down. He had the time to think of making amends but, unfortunately, he was too late, because as soon as he opened his mouth to spout something that, for all Sypha knew, could have been more mockery, her tolerance ran out. Before the noises from Trevor's mouth could form a single word, the magician's brow twitched and her foot swung under the table: as if her foot was divinely guided, it landed a solid kick to his leg, right in the middle of his shin, with the hardest and sharpest possible edge of her sandal sole.

'I told you, they weren't shady!' Sypha enunciated while the vampire hunter recoiled in pain. 'They were our friends, the Eagle Guardian's grandson, his wife, and their firstborn son!'

 _'Oops_ ,' hissed Trevor through gritted teeth, dearly regretting his choices.

Sypha went on: 'They were going to go up the mountain to have the Eagle Guardian anoint the child, before the duties of the Eagle Guardian are passed onto the next one! And unlike _you_ ,' she spat, 'they are very nice, very dutiful people who have earned our trust!'

Trevor was dumbstruck as he looked back up at the Speaker's face – how could he have possibly known to look out for something like this? Out of desperation, he glanced at Alucard, hoping the half-vampire somehow found it in him to help appease their friend but no, Alucard wasn't coming to his rescue. And no, Sypha wasn't done schooling him either.

'Also _,_ ' Sypha continued in a stern voice, pointing an accusing finger at Trevor, 'how dare you lecture me about crooked alchemists when _your family_ was full of them _,_ you hypocrite?' she scolded him.

Trevor sank in his chair – his family's shadier alchemical interests had been among quite a few things that he and the other younger Belmonts had been absolutely forbidden from mentioning outside the basement...

'And they tried to be so sneaky about it too! I don't understand what for, though!' Sypha huffed, folding her arms. 'The Hold is already plenty hidden, so what is with all the _”secret,” ”hidden”_ messages left everywhere? Who did they leave them for?'

Alucard raised an eyebrow at her. 'The what now?' he asked.

'You didn't notice when we were down there?' the Speaker questioned in surprise. 'The place is riddled with cryptic hints using alchemical symbolism. Slips of paper tucked in books, carvings made on the undersides of shelves, even patterns on the floor! I went and followed one trail of them yesterday just to see what it was there for – it took me all of fifteen minutes to find a secret stash of rare and dangerous alchemical materials.'

'Huh,' Alucard said, a little taken aback. 'Well, I have to admit: alchemy isn't my cup of tea, so I might have seen them without realising what they were.'

He turned his head to look at Trevor, giving him a look of disdain. Though shrunken down in his seat, Trevor gave him an unappreciative glower in return.

'My wild guess is that it isn't yours either,' the dhampir spoke to him coolly.

The vampire hunter looked away and shrugged. 'There's a lot of things I was only supposed to be taught when I'm older,' he muttered.

'Hmh. I see. I guess that explains your lack of manners and cleanliness,' Alucard remarked.

Trevor rolled his eyes and sat upright once again. 'You know,' he began unhappily, 'I wasn't expecting much when I gave you my family's basement, but I thought that you would at least stop treating me like a witless wildman, you ingrate.'

Alucard shrugged. 'Well, you just reverted to treating her, a guest in my house, like a naïve girl, so I would say that we are even,' he responded casually whilst nodding in Sypha's direction.

Seeing the potential for this to escalate, Sypha let out a noisy exasperated sigh and intervened.

' _Enough_ ,' she commanded. 'You two should be long past this kind of behaviour!'

She turned to her dhampir host sternly and admonished him: 'Alucard, don't fight my fights. I have probably been winning them longer than you have been alive.'

While Alucard recoiled as if hit by a splash of ice cold water, the magician regarded Trevor: 'And you! Let this be the last time you speak ill of people you know nothing about. You're just going to embarrass yourself again.'

The vampire hunter grimaced, which his Speaker friend soundly ignored and went on. 'Now, let's go back to enjoying our meal,' she urged her companions and gestured at the table. 'It would be rude to the poor pig who gave its life for it if we didn't.'

Whilst she fed herself a spoonful of stew in aloof silence, Trevor and Alucard shared a look of dismay. Although they had been chewed out by their comrade many times before, they were still in awe at the presence and air of authority she could wield when she wanted to. Realising that they'd had the exact same thought, the two snickered sheepishly, glanced at Sypha, who was narrowing her eyes at them, daring them to try to pick up where they had left off, then relented and began eating again like good obedient boys.

The three ate in silence for a while, which gave Trevor time to reflect on his actions. He hated to admit it but Alucard had hit the nail on the head: for a moment, he had gone back to treating Sypha as the sheltered brat he had taken her for in the beginning of their journey. Though he had pretty quickly seen that she was a competent mage and surprisingly unflappable in battle, he had still assumed that she was a bit of a precious, stuck up know-it-all who was used to people pulling their punches around her pretty little face. Alas, quite soon after her grandfather and his mellowing influence had left her vicinity, Sypha had demonstrated to Trevor that people indeed probably pulled their punches around her, only they most likely did so because she was _not_ someone to be messed with. 'My angel,' Sypha's grandfather had called her – was it because of her looks and other pleasant qualities, or because she was a fierce and capable guardian, with eyes in the back of her head?

Well, whatever the case migh have been, another part that Trevor had gotten wrong, this time to his relief, was that she wasn't as stubborn or difficult to appease as he had thought her to be. While spite was Trevor's main driving force at this point, bearing a grudge seemed to take a lot of effort from his Speaker friend – she much preferred to forgive and move on with her life. Thus, when she eventually broke the silence and began a casual conversation with Alucard about something Trevor had little to say in, she went out of her way to make him feel included as well.

'I don't know... I mean, I don't _mind_ writing it down,' Sypha responded to Alucard hesitantly. 'Thinking about it, I _can_ see other applications for the locking spell than trapping this castle. But, I don't know how comfortable I am with storing something I've scribbled down in the Hold for someone to actually read. I think I would rather dictate to you while you write.'

Suddenly, she turned her attention to the vampire hunter, who was listening to her with his arms folded, quite bored.

'Orrrr...' the Speaker drawled, 'since you don't want to pull our wagon, apparently, how about _you_ become my scribe for a day?'

Trevor sputtered. ' _Me_?' he questioned in disbelief. 'What the hell, Sypha?'

Alucard narrowed his eyes at him. 'My words exactly,' he uttered. 'Didn't he admit he can't even read?'

Trevor hemmed and shot him a dirty look. 'Oh bugger off,' he huffed. 'I said I can't read _magic_ , alright? Just magic. I was taught how to read and write by a governess, not a bloody wizard.'

Hearing this, Sypha froze for a moment. The look in her eyes turned distant until she fluttered her eyelashes and began rubbing her temples.

'I should be used to it by now, but... it still takes me out of it whenever I try to imagine you growing up in a wealthy household, surrounded by servants,' she murmured. She then let out a short sigh and looked back at her friend. 'Anyway,' she continued, 'I don't know how much or how little you've written in your lifetime, I'm pretty sure you've done it way more than I have. I learned to write by drawing letters on sand, with a stick, and that is how I've done most of my penmanship.'

Trevor raised an eyebrow at this. Tickled that he had managed to once again forget a very basic fact about Speakers and their lifestyle, he snorted and murmured: 'Oh, right... Speakers aren't exactly known for their literary works, are they.'

'Nope!' Sypha confirmed. In the tone of someone boasting about her achievements, she went on: 'Nobody could have ever guessed that I would need to write down more than the occasional incantation. My handwriting is like that of a child.'

Trevor could only grin at that. Alucard sounded somewhat endeared as well when he reminded the Speaker: 'I'm certain that if someone comes here looking for a spell to catch an elusive building, they'll be glad to find it written down, no matter what the handwriting is like.'

'Maybe,' Sypha admitted, 'but still, just imagine someone going through all those beautiful books in the Hold, only to come across some paper that looks like a six-year-old wrote it! I know _I_ wouldn't be able to take that seriously.'

Alucard hemmed softly. 'Well, I wouldn't mind putting off my search for those distance mirror commands to transcribe for you,' he told the magician. 'But, I do wish you at least tried writing yourself. For posterity, it would be nice to preserve something penned by a Speaker.'

Sypha seemed a little surprised to hear this, perhaps even a little flustered. Trevor could see her intent to object before she even found her voice again, and so he butted in.

'Just do it,' he urged. 'My father, for one, would have been over the moon about having something written by a Speaker in our collection.'

This perturbed Sypha even more, as if she was suddenly allergic to praise.

'A-alright, fine,' she stammered, somewhat peeved. 'I guess I'll give it a try. But if it comes out looking as terrible as I think it will, one of you is going to have to write for me.'

Trevor breathed sharply through his nose in amusement – it was strange and yet somehow befitting that out of all things possible, this cock-sure polymath would be self-conscious about something as inconsequential as _handwriting_.

'Sure,' he grunted. 'I think we can manage that. And by _we,_ I mean him,' he continued and pointed his thumb at Alucard, 'because even though I _can_ write, I'm severely out of practice.'

'Hmph. Of course,' the half-vampire muttered. 'Leaving all the real work to me, as always.'

'Oh, really?' Trevor questioned with a snort. With all the casual smarm he had in him, he went on: 'Remind me: who's the one who's done all the pig shit shoveling for you in the _”blood pantry_ ” for the past two days?'

At this point, Sypha let out another exasperated sigh and gestured at the two men to tone down.

'Either one of you is fine!' she assured them. 'Let's just go with whoever's least busy at the time.'

Alucard let out a stifled almost-snort and side-eyed her.

'You have a preference, though,' he remarked quietly.

The mage shot him a piercing glare, which the dhampir foresaw and deftly avoided meeting by looking away. Whilst Trevor looked on with bemusement, Sypha grumbled something ineligible to herself before shaking her head and voicing her lamentation more clearly.

'I don't know how I didn't see this coming: of course you two getting along better means you're ganging up on me,' she complained.

Trevor gave a questioning look to her, then to Alucard. 'Huh. Are we getting along, Alucard?' he asked.

The half-vampire shrugged. 'More now than we did in the beginning, I suppose...'

Sypha rolled her eyes at this exchange so theatrically, it made the two men snicker.

'Well, I'm done,' the Speaker announced, looking down at her empty plate. She then glanced at her friends' plates, which were also empty. 'Cleanup time?'

'Sure,' Alucard responded.

'Fine by me,' Trevor responded as well.

With that, things seemed normal again: the three stood up and tidied after themselves in peace, washing the dishes and wiping the table. Yet, something was still ever so slightly off to Trevor. For one, a smidgen of tension remained between him and Sypha and the mage seemed to want it resolved: as Trevor did his part of the chores, he kept feeling like she was vying for an opportunity to pull him aside to tell him something. The vampire hunter had his own issues as well, mostly with what Alucard had said. The dhampir _knew_ didn't he? Sypha's pursuit, or at least her _preference,_ wasn't just a misinterpretation or delusion of Trevor's. He very much wanted to confirm this and so, just like the Speaker intended to have a word in private with him, he was eager to have a little talk with Alucard. Sadly, the half-vampire set both of their plans back with a single question.

'So, about the writing... Would you like to get started right away?' he asked whilst wiping his hands on a hand towel.

'What?' Sypha asked, surprised, as she was unrolling her single intact sleeve.

'I could show you where to find ink, pens, and paper right now if you want,' Alucard said.

'Oh,' Sypha said and glanced at Trevor unsurely.

The vampire hunter exhaled sharply through his nose as he weighed a variety of excuses and their cost-effectiveness in his head. In a fraction of a second he scrapped them, however – getting that spell thing written down was probably vastly more important in the long run compared to... whatever this relationship shite was.

'It's just going to be a couple more days before we leave, right?' the vampire hunter reminded his friend. 'Might want to get this done as soon as possible instead of procrastinating.'

Sypha furrowed her brows and nodded. 'Right,' she agreed reluctantly.

Trevor nodded as well. 'Great,' he said. Then, much to the chagrin of his friends, he dropped this before he left the kitchen: 'Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go take a shit.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lacul Vulturilor is a real place, by the way. The things I mention about it aren't real at all, I don't think.


	2. Family Fractures

Stepping out of the latrine, Trevor was reminded once again of how much he utterly _hated_ Dracula's castle. Not even the place to do one's business was anything that made sense to him, like a hole in the bottom of one of the impossible-looking towers that jutted out of other towers like arms of a candelabra. No, vampires were too special and otherworldly for simple solutions: nothing less than a fancily decorated seat with a roaring incineration machine underneath sufficed. Every little chore needed its own machine, after all.

Another thing that made Trevor's pragmatist brain itch was, said machines and everything else that was supposed to be of use were scattered across this giant maze of a structure, separated by what felt like miles of luridly ornate but functionally empty space. Going through all the endlessly long and lifeless halls, corridors, and staircases time and time again was a chore unto itself and getting to the next place he needed to be made Trevor irate like nothing else – surely however much time and effort the machines saved, it was lost just going from place to place.

Naturally, he hadn't been too happy sweeping through the place repeatedly for surviving vampires and other monsters, or going around disposing of their remains. It hadn't been _all_ bad, though, because it had led to some memorably absurd moments. Like, for example, when Trevor had walked down one of the many empty corridors, systematically checking every room, only to begin hearing a constant distant noise coming from somewhere far ahead. He had homed in on it, Morning Star at the ready, and so he had opened a heavy door, peered inside, and found... a bunch of pigs. Just a room full of ordinary, run-of-the-mill hogs grunting, snuffling, and moseying around in their pens, some of them raising their snout and sniffing at the stranger that had just rudely barged into their home.

'What the hell is that bastard going to do with all of you?' Trevor asked of the animals, having come once again to check on them.

He got no response from the swine, most of whom were sprawled on their sides the stone floor, resting. One of them did come to greet him in hopes of treats, though, and let out a big old sneeze just as it reached the gate of its pen.

'Hmh. Bless you,' the vampire hunter muttered.

Having confirmed that the pigs didn't need anything, Trevor moved on. He walked out of the pigsty and walked further down the corridor to check on the geldings instead. With little else to pass the time with, he took them out of their stalls and escorted them outside to graze once again – watching them choosily nibble on freshly emerged blades of grass was about as interesting as watching it grow but Trevor didn't see himself as having much else to do. Sypha and Alucard were busy with the whole writing thing, Alucard had forbidden him from going to the wine cellar, and while he might have found something of interest in the Hold, getting in and out of the place was too much of a hassle to bother.

And so, he sat on a rock and daydreamed about ale, while the horses ate nearby. He bounced his legs nervously, he picked at his scabs, he juggled his throwing knives, did target practice with both the Varmpire Killer whip and the Morning Star. After a while, he took the horses for another leisurely walk through the woods, then took them back inside, where he brushed them down. The last time he had been this thorough had been when he had been made to play stable boy for his family's exceedingly particular stable master as punishment. As he stepped back from the animals to inspect the immaculate results of his work, the Belmont heir let out a deep sigh, realising how desperate he was to keep himself busy.

'Boys...' he spoke out to the geldings in an ailing voice. 'You two better get in shape to pull that wagon before I die of boredom.'

The animals hardly gave a toss about what their caretaker was saying. Seeing this, said caretaker scratched the back of his head, shrugged, and took the horses back to their stalls, where they already had their evening feed waiting for them. After that, it was the pigs' turn to eat and after them, it was his turn. His comrades were nowhere to be seen when he arrived at the kitchen and dining area and they didn't turn up as he had nibbled on leftovers eaning against a kitchen counter. They had eaten already, he supposed.

When the vampire hunter was done eating, he sighed once again and rubbed the back of his neck. He was in trouble, wasn't he? If this, just a few hours of keeping himself busy with chores, was so painfully dull to him, how much worse was it going to be when he returned to his normal daily life? Trudging along roads all alone, lucky to be passed by an odd cart or wagon. Usually tired, most likely starving, having little else to look forward to except the tiny fraction of his time when he got to eat, drink, fuck, and sleep his boredom away.

Oh well. Things would work out in their usual dreary way, he supposed. And now that Dracula's hordes had been unleashed on the world, he wasn't going to be quite so alone walking between towns anymore, now, was he? And his skill in hunting them was actually something that was probably sought after, meaning he could maybe make something of a living off of it for as long as stock lasted.

In any case, he was done for the day. Judging by the diminishing orange glow in the window, all that was left for him to do was to head to the ruins and get his fire going again. Sypha and Alucard had tried to coax him to at least sleep in the castle but no, the thought of laying down in some vampire's bed wasn't attractive to him in the least. He was used to sleeping outdoors, anyway.

With that in mind, he headed out of the kitchen and navigated the much hated corridors back to the stables, where the contents of his and his comrades' wagon had been loaded, and grabbed a blanket. Out of curiosity, he also picked up his old leather cloak and gave it a sniff. Oh boy... Having become resensitised to its odour during his separation from it, he had to admit: it did have quite the stench to it. It was probably time to leave it behind it as soon as winter had fully subsided.

That being said, it was already quite warm: stepping outside, Trevor was once again surprised at how not freezing the night was even though the skies were clear. How long was this warm dry period going to last? Farmers probably had a hard enough time with all the monsters running around, the last thing they needed to start the spring season with was a proper drought.

Not that Trevor was complaining yet, though – he didn't mind an abundance of dry wood to build a fire with. He had collected a decent pile of it in the middle of what had once been the Belmont manor's training hall, now hardly recogniseable. Instead of chandeliers hanging high up in the ceiling, murals of monsters being vanquished by bygone Belmonts, a rack of training weapons, and a very impatient grandfather waiting for his students, there was just rubble surrounded by half-collapsed walls. Trevor had cleared a spot of debris for his fire, exposing some of the now chipped and cracked stone floor underneath and dragged a charred piece of wooden support beam for him to sit on. On this beam, Trevor rested and poked at the makings of a vigorous fire with a lucky find: a rusty fire iron. Nearly everything else even remotely worth anything had either burned or been taken, it seemed. Trevor scanned the dark ruins with a look of indifference – unless he really tried, he had trouble seeing his childhood home in this mess. It was better that way, he supposed, since it made it a whole lot easier to not be haunted by the sights, sounds, and smells of old.

Trevor turned his attention back to the growing flames and relaxed. There was a chance that if there were any night creatures flying around, they might see this fire and its smoke from miles away, but none had come for him ever since the raiding of Dracula's castle, so he was hardly worried. Thus, the vampire hunter allowed himself to zone out as he stared into the fire, wondering idly what nonsense the next day had in store.

This didn't mean he had completely let his guard down, though. When his ear picked up a faint sound of pebbles rolling and soft footfalls on grit, he tensed and gripped his fire iron tight, ready to poke the eyes out of any monster that was coming his way. But to his surprise, there was no monster: it was just his Speaker friend again, stepping out from the shadow cast by one of the intact archways that led to the ruined hall.

'Sypha,' Trevor blurted out, freezing in place.

The mage came towards the fire at a leisurely pace and stopped a few paces away. She gave Trevor an bemused, questioning look as she casually shifted her weight on one leg.

'So, may I join you, or...?' she asked and cocked her brow at his ”weapon,” still raised.

Trevor blinked in confusion a couple of times before the realisation hit him. He hemmed at himself and loosened up, re-seating himself comfortably and resting his arms in his lap.

'Of course,' he replied.

Sypha smirked and reached her hands under her robe. When she pulled them out, they were holding a roll of bandage and a small opaque bottle of what Trevor knew to be wound ointment.

'Even if I intend to use these?' she asked.

Trevor rolled his eyes. ' _Ugh_ ,' he groaned exaggeratedly. 'Well if you insist...'

With that, the vampire hunter began taking off the arm guard on his right wrist. His friend, meanwhile, walked around his back and sat next to him on the thick wooden beam.

'So how's the writing going?' Trevor inquired, loosening the laces of the guard.

'Oh, it was horrible,' Sypha answered. 'Alucard really made me pay for that comment I made about his age. He kept coaxing me to keep going with my awful scribbling while he sat nearby, drawing these _gorgeous_ detailed plans for something he's thinking of building. It's so unfair.'

The magician made a sour expression and shook her head, earning her a snicker from her comrade.

'Oh well,' she added whilst letting her shoulders slump. 'At least I got it all done in one go. As soon as Alucard finds a binder for my scribbles, I get to throw the whole thing in the Hold and never think of it again.'

Trevor, done removing his arm guard, offered his bandaged hand to the Speaker. 'I thought he was supposed to be looking for those mirror incantations or something, not drawing,' he commented.

'He's been doing that, too,' Sypha said as she began unwrapping his hand. 'I think reading through his father's notes takes a toll on him so he needs to take breaks from it. He's... not saying much about them, though, so I don't know. And I'm not comfortable asking him about it, either.'

She let out a short sigh and shook her head slightly. 'He has opened up so much, yet he is still so difficult to read. I wish I knew what to say to him but almost everything I come up with feels either presumptuous or obvious enough to feel asinine,' she lamented.

Trevor hemmed at her words softly. 'That's just how tragedies are, no matter who they happen to,' he said in a quiet voice. 'Words rarely do them justice.'

Having said this, a bout of silence fell between the two. Feeling a little awkward just staring at Sypha unwrapping his bandages, Trevor soon turned his gaze to look into the flames instead. Soon after he did that, though, the Speaker spoke up.

'How's your shin?' she inquired without looking away from her task at hand.

'Huh?' Trevor asked, dazed.

'Your shin,' Sypha repeated. 'I kicked it pretty hard,' she reminded.

'Oh, that,' Trevor remembered. 'S'alright,' he mumbled. 'Could hardly feel it, really.'

Sypha let out a sharp breath through her nose and she seemed to roll her eyes – hard to tell from the angle her head was – yet she sounded a little bashful when she next spoke.

'I still shouldn't have done it,' she said, not looking up from the blood-spotted bandages she was peeling off. 'Even though I, honestly, didn't think I was even going to hit you, much less that hard. In any case... I'm sorry, it was a shameful thing to do.'

'It's fine, Sypha,' the vampire hunter assured her. 'I was practically begging for it, anyway.'

Sypha breathed a sigh of relief and let some of the tension in her shoulders melt away. Trevor smiled at this sight, quite endeared – this was what she had meant to say to him after dinner, wasn't it? It must have weighed on her mind pretty heavily ever since, unnecessarily so. Apologising seemed to be a bit hard for someone as proud as her, but knowing Speakers, she had been taught to do so promptly for every wrongdoing, no matter how painstaking it was.

'Even then, I should've known better,' the magician muttered, more to herself than to Trevor at this point. 'As a Speaker, I shouldn't be that easy to provoke into violence.'

The Belmont heir snickered at this and looked away from his friend with a squint, trying to recall when he had last spoken of his father's Speaker troubles.

'I didn't tell _you_ did I...?' he murmured. When he glimpsed from the corner of his eye that his friend was looking up at him, he shrugged and turned his attention back to her. 'My father came into fisticuffs with a Speaker once,' he said matter-of-factly. 'Wasn't terribly thrilled with my father wanting to put Speaker histories on paper.'

Sypha snorted at this and went back to examining his now exposed gash between his thumb and index finger. 'That,' she said dryly, 'is what Arn would call ” _not a true Speaker._ ”'

'That uptight fellow in your tribe, the dark-haired one?' Trevor questioned, sounding chuffed. 'He absolutely did say that. Not word for word, sure, but that's pretty much what he meant.'

Sypha let out an annoyed huff. 'Why of course he did,' she said under her breath.

The vampire hunter let out an intrigued hum, intentionally signaling to her that the remark he was about to make was going to be smug as hell.

'Is that resentment I hear in your voice?' the vampire hunter finally asked. 'It can't be, though, can it. Speakers are one big happy family that sprawls across the world, aren't they,' he said facetiously.

Sypha exhaled noisily and shook her head. 'We _are_ a big, happy family,' she insisted as she grabbed her bottle of ointment. 'We're just one that has a hobby of having, mm... _philosophical debates_.'

Those words came out quite loaded. So much so, actually, that she immediately dropped any pretense it wasn't an euphemism for something much worse.

'In fact,' she said haughtily and gave Trevor a quick dirty look from under her brows, 'if you think us two or you and Alucard have been bad thus far, you should see me and Arn going at it.'

The Belmont heir raised an eyebrow at her. Sypha, who was ripping a small piece of clean bandage to spread ointment with, went on:

'I bet you couldn't decide between being terrified and terribly bored by the time it's gone on for hours and neither one of us is backing down!' she bragged. 'Grandfather has the patience of a saint but once he forbade us from talking to each other for three days, that was how fed up he was with us.'

' _Huh_ ,' the vampire hunter voiced, intrigued and amused, at first. Then, upon thinking about it for more than a second, he realised what he had heard was... not that great, actually. 'Well that sounds bad,' he said, unsure whether he should be impressed or disappointed.

Sypha shrugged whilst she dabbed her ointment onto his wound. 'We Speakers care immensely about doing the right thing,' she explained. 'When we fundamentally disagree on what that is, we can't just let it go. And Arn and I, we disagree on a lot of things.'

'Such as?' Trevor questioned.

Sypha grimaced slightly and looked away, seeming to go through a whole laundrylist of things in her mind in search of something easy to explain.

'Hmm, well,' she began a little unsurely. 'One thing that always comes up is that Arn thinks that spells that can be used to attack are basically weapons. As such, they ideally shouldn't be used or even learned by Speakers,' she summarised. She added for clarity: 'That's... most of the magic I do.'

Trevor nodded at this. 'Yeah, I can see how that's a bit of an issue,' he said. 'Shouldn't your grandfather help resolve things like these as the head of your family, though?'

'Oh he tries,' Sypha said with a chuckle. 'Just like he tried to keep me from going to those catacombs all alone.'

'Hmh. I see,' Trevor grunted. 'So you weren't even _sent_ there, you rascal.'

Sypha snickered as she glanced up at him. Then, seeing the look in his eye, she seemed to realise she might have made things sound worse than they were.

'Don't get me wrong, though,' she told Trevor whilst she pocketed her ointment bottle and grabbed the roll of bandage again. 'I truly think of Arn as a brother and I know he cares for me in turn. We're both just very vocal about things we care about and we just... can't be on the same wagon for too long.'

Trevor nodded again. 'I understand,' he assured her. 'We had a whole lot of that going on in my family, too.'

 _'_ Really?' Sypha blurted out, sounding utterly fascinated, and then shrunk back and averted her eyes in embarrassment just as quickly. She returned to tying bandage around her friend's wrist in a hurry.

Trevor chuckled – he had indeed made it pretty clear he didn't appreciate being constantly prodded about his family, but he didn't mind her being curious.

'Yeah...' he confirmed wistfully. 'One thing that the adults were always bickering about was what we should do with the church breathing down our neck, if you can believe it.'

Sypha furrowed her brow and nodded as she pulled the bandage diagonally across the back of Trevor's hand.

'Matters of faith in general were always a touchy subject,' he went on, reminiscing. 'Half of my family were pretty devout and conventional believers and my grandfather and the rest were, uh... not,' he said with a snort. 'I'd say they thought of God sort of like a lazy employer who provides the tools for the job but is never there when you need him, and is terrible at giving instructions.'

Sypha surprised him with a very quiet mutter: 'Well they weren't _wrong_.'

Trevor snickered. 'Yeah,' he agreed. 'I guess the others had a point about some things too, though. For example, who knows where we'd be if we had been more involved with the church, maybe tried to do something about the corruption before things got so bad, instead of just assuming they'd let us do our thing if we kept shoveling money at them.'

Sypha winced. 'In an earlier grave, quite possibly,' she pointed out, sounding a little apologetic. 'For all we know, trying to have a voice might have just bumped you higher on their list of threats to eliminate.'

'That could be it too, sure,' Trevor admitted. 'And I guess it's a bit late to ponder about that sort of thing now, whatever the case might have been.'

They were both quiet for a while after this. While Sypha got into an easy-going repeating figure eight loop with her bandaging, going around his thumb and then around his palm, Trevor scanned his surroundings idly. He looked over his shoulder at the highest tower of his old house, still somehow mostly intact, and pondered the times he had climbed it.

'You know,' Trevor suddenly spoke whilst staring up at the tower, startling Sypha and prompting her to look up at him. 'My grandfather was an uptight old miser if there ever was one, but sometimes he let me and my cousins take his spyglass and climb way up there to look around with it.'

'Oh,' the Speaker responded, surprised.

Trevor went on without looking at her: 'Once I looked just in time to have a really good view of a hawk catching a hare. It was the most savage thing I'd ever seen, I couldn't stop talking about it for weeks.' He held a brief pause, sneering at the memory. 'Drove my cousins absolutely bonkers.'

Sypha snickered as she returned to wrapping the last few loops of bandage. 'Cousins, huh...' she said quietly, sounding a little plaintive.

'Yeah,' Trevor said, hiding the sting he felt in his heart. He continued as nonchalantly as he could, 'There was a bunch of us kids and I was the most forgettable one of the whole lot. How the fuck I, out of all of us, ended up the only one still alive is anyone's guess.'

That was as much as he was going to say about that, he decided, and hoped his friend didn't ask for him to elaborate. He was pleased, then, when the mage suddenly just pronounced her task completed.

'There, I'm done,' she said.

When Trevor looked down at his hand, Sypha was smoothing out the spot in his wrist where she had tucked the end of the bandage.

'It's not too tight, is it?' she asked.

Trevor clenched and unclenched his hand a couple of times, then wrung his wrist a little. 'Nope, don't think so,' he replied.

Sypha nodded, satisfied, and reached down to pick up the soiled bandages she had let drop on the ground. Whilst she balled them up and threw them into the fire, Trevor put his arm guard back on and reckoned: since he had shared quite a bit about his family, it was only fair that he finally got to ask Sypha about her apparent lack of blood relatives apart from her grandfather, wasn't it?

'So, Sypha,' he begun whilst tightening the laces of his wrist guard, 'are you an only child?'

'No,' the magician answered offhandedly and turned her attention back to him. 'I have brothers and sisters by the hundreds, after all.'

'I think your definition of "brother" and "sister" is a bit different from mine, here,' Trevor objected, a little annoyed that she was making him specify this.

'I know,' Sypha said with a smirk. 'But even with a stricter view of what siblings are, what I said about Arn is true: he is a brother to me. Though all Speakers are family to me, the people I grew up with are much more so than others, naturally. Even the ones who have left us and found happiness in other caravans.'

Despite Trevor glaring at her expectantly, Sypha paused to look into her lap and let out a wistful sigh. 'I hope they're well... Philo should be, at least, since his caravan isn't in Wallachia anymore...' she murmured.

Just as she had said this, the magician shook her head. 'Anyway,' she went on. 'I _am_ the only child from my parents, specifically. That's what you meant, right?'

Trevor nodded sternly. 'Yeah,' he grunted.

Sypha smiled faintly, met his gaze with her big blue eyes, and said with remarkable ease: 'I have no memory of my mother or father. They died when I was very young.'

The vampire hunter was a bit taken aback, naturally, but his friend gave him no time to question.

'Grandfather told me it happened when we were making our way down a mountain road and there was a landslide,' she told. 'Entire wagon and everyone on it just _poof_ , gone, in a blink of an eye.'

Trevor grimaced. 'Bloody hell,' he cursed. 'That's pretty scary.'

'Right?' the Speaker went on as she turned her attention to the fire. 'The only reason I wasn't with them in that wagon was because they had needed a break from my crying – I was sick and I had kept everyone up the night before.'

There was a brief pause, during which Trevor agonised over what, if anything, he should say – just like he had said, if the right words for something like this existed, they were exceedingly hard to come by. Thankfully, Sypha continued talking soon enough, sparing him from trying to articulate his condolences.

'It's pretty humbling, you know, knowing my life was spared by something so insignificant,' she said casually. 'In fact, whenever Grandfather thinks I'm being too confident, he reminds me that my father was a talented magician yet he didn't manage to cast a single spell before it was all over for him.'

This time, Trevor didn't have to wonder what to say as the words left his mouth without even him thinking about it. Astonished that the meek and gentle elder would be so callous to his dear granddaughter, he questioned: 'Well that's a bit harsh, isn't it?'

Sypha shrugged. 'Maybe, but he's right to do so,' she stated plainly. 'Hubris is the most relentless killer of magicians. It's important to be able to accept fate – some things just cannot be avoided no matter how much knowledge and power one wields.'

'That's a weirdly defeatist attitude for an enemy of God to have,' Trevor remarked.

'Is it?' Sypha asked with a smirk. 'Or is it exactly what you'd expect from people who have stood against an unwinnable foe for centuries?'

'So you're not even trying to win, is that it?' Trevor sneered.

'Against God? No, that would be the very pinnacle of hubris,' Sypha said. 'I am of the opinion, and many Speakers agree, that the closest thing to winning against Him is to live a life of dignity and purpose on one's own terms and to help others do the same. We may not be making huge strides on that front, but we're doing pretty well considering what we're up against, I think.'

Trevor chuckled. 'You Speakers really are an odd bunch,' he commented.

'As if you're one to speak, _Belmont_ ,' Sypha said wryly. 'Did you know that the Hold was originally built to imprison living night creatures so your ancestors could conduct gruesome experiments on them? Many of them alchemical in nature, of course.'

'Well, no,' Trevor denied. 'Where'd you get that from?'

'Oh, I just got curious about that Leon Belmont you mentioned and tried to look up things about him yesterday, before I went to sleep,' she explained nonchalantly. 'I didn't find much, but I did come across some records from the time when the Belmont estate was first established and indeed, they referred to him as the master of the household.'

'Good to know I wasn't completely off the mark,' Trevor murmured.

'Uhuh. And by the way,' Sypha added, 'apparently, the Hold was basically just a glorified wine cellar for a while at one point. That's one of the very few personable things I could find about old Leon: he missed his homeland dearly so he invested quite a lot in the one thing in Wallachia that he found to be as good if not better here as it had been at home... alcohol.'

Trevor snickered. 'I'm not much of a wine person, but I feel like we would see eye to eye in a lot of other things,' he muttered. Then, remembering something, he let out a pensive hum and asked, 'Do you remember that painting of a fair-haired young man with a sword that was over the top of the staircase? I should've pointed it out to you... I was told he was the first Belmont in Wallachia, so it must be Leon.'

Sypha gasped in disbelief. ' _No way!_ ' she exclaimed giddily. 'That angelic little boy?'

'” _Little boy,_ ”' Trevor scoffed and gave her a dirty look, offended on his ancestor's behalf.

'Well that painting can't be of anyone older than eighteen,' Sypha pointed out.

'Anyone even near eighteen is hardly a little boy anymore, that's a young man,' the Belmont heir corrected her.

'To you, maybe, but me, I've never met an eighteen-year-old boy who wasn't still a complete brat. So as far as I'm concerned, they're brats,' Sypha asserted.

The two went back and forth on this for a while until they agreed to disagree. Sypha's opinion on young lads, it seemed, had been quite effectively soured, which made Trevor wonder: was it truly because of her personal experiences with them or more something that she had been told, perhaps to keep her from running off with one? He didn't dare to ask – his assuming anything less than wholesome perfection of her family had landed him in enough trouble for one day.

After this, the Speaker chatted some more about her other findings concerning ancient Belmont history. It surprised Trevor every time how much he enjoyed talking to her about... anything, really. No matter what she was saying, she occasionally came out with something that leapt out at him as peculiarly gross or savage for a Speaker to say. And it was so unclear to what extent she was self-aware, one couldn't help but to keep listening for more hints, studying her expression for a smirk or a wink that revealed it all to be a game of some sort.

Before Trevor knew it, then, he and his comradde had been chatting for a couple of hours. When the topic of going to sleep finally popped up, however, the Speaker started dragging her feet.

'Ugh, I'm so _tired_ though,' she complained.

Trevor squinted at her, desperately trying to see how this was a logical objection to his suggestion that she go get some rest. 'Yes?' he questioned, perplexed. 'All the more reason for you to haul your arse back to the castle or the Hold, wherever the hell you were going to stay thist time?'

' _Nooo..._ ' the magician whined like a child, 'I don't want to walk all the way back to the castle. And I am _so tired_ I might just royally mess up the landing and _sprain my ankle_ going down to the Hold.'

Trevor let out and exasperated sigh and gave her an incredulous, scolding scowl. She returned it with just the smuggest, most crooked of grins, not at all bothering to hide that she knew full well what she was doing.

'So you want to sleep here, then,' Trevor stated the obvious, just to be sure.

'Yep,' Sypha confirmed. She raised her brow inquisitively. 'Can't I?'

Trevor looked away and ran his hand through his hair while making a pensive, reluctant noise. God – _Alucard_ was hard to read? What about this hellion over here? For someone so seemingly forthright, she was such an enigma to him. Did she have a thing for him or not? If he said yes, was she going to take it as encouragement of her supposed advances? Trevor was wholly torn over this.

'Come on, please?' the Speaker pleaded, no longer looking so shrewd. 'I've had a _terrible_ time sleeping by myself, I'm not used to resting without risking bumping into someone if I roll around,' she confessed. Then, hastily, she added: 'Also, we shared a blanket before and it wasn't a big deal, was it? And we're going to have to be doing more of that to conserve heat when we're the road, anyway.'

'Well...' Trevor said hesitantly, trying to avoid looking at her. She didn't sound like she was even considering the salacious potential there was to this, so... maybe it was fine regardless of what kind of relationship she was aspiring to have with him?

'Okay,' he finally agreed. 'Do what you want.'

' _Yesss_ ,' Sypha rejoiced.

So... just like that, they ended up spending the night together by the fire. They laid on the ground, back-to-back, clothed – it wasn't very intimate apart from the fact that they shared blanket. Just like when he had invited her to sit next to him in the Hold, Sypha was out like a light in no time too, so no pillow talk. Was she always like this or only when shew as sleep-deprived?

Whatever the case might have been, Trevor was thankful to have a moment to himself before he fell asleep as well. He really needed to think about this... _thing_ that he was kind of dreading to even name at this point. Did Sypha really have a way with people or was it just him being attracted to her? Was there some kind of special connection between them or was he just being horny and hopeful? Was she knowingly and expertly wrapping him around her little finger or was she just an affectionate girl who had been raised to be touchy-feely with everyone? Trevor felt like all options were still wide open and that the more he thought about them, the more confusing it all got, which was, frankly, rather terrifying to him.

He really didn't see himself as having a choice, then: he was going to have to go get input from Alucard. He seemed to have insight on Sypha and though he hadn't been sharing it very generously thus far, surely there was a way to milk information out of him. Perhaps, Trevor thought somewhat reluctantly, he would even swallow his pride and play utterly dumb for the dhampir in hopes that this would cause him to let something slip.

Perhaps it was more important to think about what he was going to do in different scenarios, then, rather than trying to predict which one was true. Upon thinking about his options for a while, he actually managed to relieve himself of his dread quite a bit. Regardless of whether there was or wasn't mutual interest between them, whether Sypha was a cunning manipulator or an innocent maiden, whether she intended to pursue him or not, it was all the same. He was better off not sticking his dick in a dangerously powerful mage who was also one of his few allies... and his first friend, assuming that his cousins and a certain tree didn't count.

So he had been overthinking this pretty heavily, huh. He supposed he was still going to go interrogate Alucard the next day – he could still use the intel. He was going to have to spend a week on the road with Sypha without falling for temptation, after all.

With that goal acquired, Trevor breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed. He eyed the towers of his once grand childhood home up and down one last time before closing his eyes and squirming into a better position on the cracked stone tiles of the old training hall. Perhaps because the feeling of Sypha's back against his was reminding him that he wasn't alone, his tired mind began conjuring deeply buried sensations of a time where he had rarely been by his lonesome. There was the sound of hurried footsteps and quick breathing, the clack of wooden training weapons striking each other, the blurry reflections of candleflames on polished stone tile, the smell of sweat and leather.

'Get up, Trevor,' a familiar deep voice commanded him. Always the lazy and disobedient one, Trevor didn't move a muscle, only sank deeper into the dream that, strangely, didn't seem to want to have him. In no time at all, he was once again being helped up by a strong hand he knew so well, admonished by a stern but caring voice for goofing off and having poor form.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The part with Trevor hating on Dracula's castle might have something to do with my personal experiences exploring said creature of chaos. This shit I came in here to check several times over the course of this game, thinking it's got a secret I can unlock, is just kind of a random joke thing? Alright cool, guess I'll stare at the map for a little while until I find the next bit that looks like it's not fully filled in. It's likely another little nook or cranny with a useless piece of equipment, which is great, because god I love scrolling through my cluttered inventory just to find something that's worse than the stuff I'm already wearing! Except wait, this one buffs INT – what does INT do, again?


	3. Hard Biscuits, Not Those Scone Things

Trevor didn't know it, but he was about to have a very strange morning. Thanks to Sypha, he woke up way earlier than he was used to, and not by any means voluntarily: it all started with her calling his name and shaking his shoulder. Then, when she called his name a bit louder and got no response, she progressed to outright mischief, which he could no longer quite ignore.

'Time to get up, Treffy,' she informed with merciless cheer and poked his cheek with her finger.

Finally, Trevor acknowledged her efforts by mumbling and grumbling. He took deep noisy breaths, feeling like he might as well have been demanded to claw his way up from his grave, and grimaced at the lack of sensation in his arm. It was fully asleep from him resting his head on it and just the knowledge that it was going to be all pins and needles as soon as he moved it made the vampire hunter want to go back to not being awake. He took so poorly to being woken up, in fact, that it was apparently a cause for concern. Prompted by a feeling of a warm hand placed on his forehead, Trevor finally opened his eyes, squinting up at the blurry visage of his friend kneeling and hunching over him. She was staring off into the distance with a thoughtful, somewhat worried expression, whilst holding her other hand against her own forehead.

'I don't think I have a fever, Sypha,' Trevor droned, closing his eyes again. 'Even without a hangover or an illness, I'm just really not a morning person. Also,' he added, 'I'm still not and will never be _”Treffy,_ ” alright...'

Sypha hemmed and, quite without the faintest idea that it would be a big deal, she did something that made sure her friend became wide awake in record time: she gave his long stubble a light stroke with the back of her fingers, just quickly and gently running them down his jaw. Whilst she stood up and turned away, blissfully unaware, Trevor blinked profusely while reeling from the surprisingly intimate-feeling gesture. As soon as he managed to, he raised his head a little and stared up at Sypha's back in a daze, heart racing.

As if he wasn't quite shaken enough, he then watched in stunned silence as the magician walked a few steps away from him, took off her robe, and looked like she was going to take the rest of her clothes off as well. She didn't do that, however: Trevor couldn't quite see what she was doing instead, but she seemed to loosen her garb a little before she sat down cross-legged and straightened her back. She then proceeded to take a couple of deep controlled breaths and do something with her hands that created a brief flash of light. Once she exhaled noisily, she appeared to be done with whatever she was doing, after which she stood back up, straightened her tunic, and put her robe back on.

Seeing that nothing was really happening, Trevor took a deep breath, feeling like he hadn't done any breathing in a while. That thing he had seen had been just some kind of weird magician thing, he realised. Grimacing, he finally rolled on his back and pushed his torso up with the arm that still felt attached to his body and began reviving his other arm by rubbing it up and down. Sypha noticed this and turned to him, giving him a questioning look.

'Bloody arm's all numb,' Trevor grumbled. 'You could cut if off at the shoulder and I wouldn't feel a thing.'

'That's what you get for using it as a pillow,' Sypha murmured. Then, out of absolutely nowhere, she said: 'By the way, you _stink_.'

Trevor snorted. 'You've only just noticed?' he jeered.

'No, I've noticed, but you haven't been so bad since you stopped wearing that terrible cloak. It smells like someone pissed, vomited, and then died on it.'

'Huh,' the vampire hunter murmured and scoured through his memories. 'I know the first two have definitely happened, but... has anyone _died_ on that thing …?'

Sypha made a face. 'Well, that's disgusting and depressing,' she said in deadpan, 'but I'm more concerned why, on top of everything else, you've started to smell like you've let your bowels loose on yourself.'

Trevor hummed pensively at this, scratching his scruffy beginning of a beard. 'I guess I might have gotten some pig shit on me, taking care of Dracula's.... no, _Alucard's_ pigs.'

'Great,' Sypha said with feigned cheer, clasped her hands together, and brought them in front of her mouth. 'Well guess what: I'm not getting on a wagon with you until you have a bath and wash your clothes, wash them _really_ well.'

'Sypha?' Trevor began, amused, and gestured at the ruins surrounding him. 'I used to live in _this_ thing. Servants washed my clothes up until the day I ended up homeless. Do you seriously think I know how to do laundry well, much less _really_ well?'

The mage rolled her eyes and groaned. 'Fine, I'll do the laundry for you,' she grumbled. 'Might as well wash my own clothes too while I'm at it.' Then, pausing, she raised an eyebrow at her friend. A slight condescending smirk teased her lips as she asked: 'But, so, uh... do you understand how _bathing_ works or...?'

The Belmont heir smirked back. 'I think I'll manage,' he assured her.

Once Trevor had gotten fully up and the two had completed what little morning preparations they had left, they headed towards Dracula's castle. When they walked past the shortcut the giant minotaur had made to get to the Hold, the vampire hunter remembered something he had been meaning to ask.

'How do you get up from there, anyway?' he inquired and craned his head in an effort to peer into the big hole in the ground. 'I'm guessing you use that wind thing to cushion your landing when you go down, but... Do you also use it to jump higher to get up?'

Sypha perked up, seeming surprised and happy that he would ask about anything related to magic. 'Well, I do propel myself upwards, but not with wind magic: I use fire,' she replied. She then made a quick hand gesture mimicking something flying past her face and said, 'Also, I don't just jump, I fly!'

Trevor raised an eyebrow at her in _severe_ doubt. 'You can _fly_?' he questioned.

'Yes!' Sypha responded, barely able to hide her glee. 'It's something new I was dabbling with just before the night hordes attacked.'

'No way,' Trevor said in disbelief and stopped walking. He folded his arms and gave his friend an expectant glower. 'This I have to see.'

Sypha gave him a smug look and shrugged her shoulders as she, too, came to a stop. She rolled up her only sleeve, muttering: 'Just so I don't lose this one as well, I still have control issues with this trick...'

When she had gotten her sleeve out of the way, the Speaker took a couple of spry steps back. She rubbed her palms together, as if to warm them up, then clapped them together.

'Alright, here we go...' she said and took a deep breath.

After lowering her arms to her sides and turning her palms towards the ground, Sypha began emanating an orange glow from her hands. Then, the glow turned into two spikes of flame that shot downwards. Before their tapering ends could touch the ground, however, Sypha was lifted up to her tippy toes and off into the air. The vampire hunter watched in utter shock as the magician hovered up and just kept rising higher and higher.

'Jesus fucking Christ...' he cursed under his breath, not sure if he should have been worried or amazed when the woman passed the height of at least four men standing on each other's shoulders.

The grin on her face when she stopped and looked down at him told him she was on top of things, thankfully. Just to really drive the point home, she did a little twirl in the air, spinning round her heels two times before coming to a slow stop. At this point, Trevor couldn't help it: a wide grin spread on his face as well and he broke out in an incredulous laugh.

'Well bloo-dee hell!” he yelled. 'You really weren't lying!'

Sypha smirked at him from the heights she had ascended to, looking exhilarated and oh so pleased with herself. The sight made Trevor's heart skip a beat and caused a shiver to go down his spine. Just as he thought that his day had been made, he also felt a vicious sting in his consciousness that made his breath hitch. _God_ , he thought with equal parts delight and anguish, he was going to miss the hell out of that cocky smile!

Still basking in glory far above her friend, Sypha was oblivious to his internal turmoil. She started to lessen the intensity of her hand flames, causing her to come back down, but her slow descent gave Trevor a little time to get ahold of himself. By the time the mage stopped fueling the magical flames and let herself drop the distance of a dainty little hop, the vampire hunter was no longer quite as shaken. Still, he didn't even try to act like he wasn't thoroughly impressed.

'Why the hell do I keep hearing about riding brooms and greased sticks when you can apparently use magic to do _that_?' he asked the magician in disbelief.

'Just goes to show the odd inner workings of people who invent scandalous stories about witches,' she said haughtily as she rolled down her sleeve.

Trevor shook his head. 'How do I also get this feeling like that might not be something a lot of magicians can do?' he asked.

Sypha's smile turned somewhat wry. 'Not a lot of magicians try,' she said whilst resuming her walk towards the castle. 'Elemental magic is generally considered raw and unrefined, partially because it is so physical,' she explained. 'Compared to many other kinds of magic, it is rather straightforward. People who become magicians tend to be interested in pursuits that are more _intellectual_ and _creative_ than that.'

'So basically, they're boring?' Trevor summarised as he followed in her footsteps.

The magician snickered. 'Yeah! That is certainly one way of putting it,' she agreed.

The two reached Dracula's castle soon and headed straight for the kitchen. They had a surprise waiting for them there: a whole bunch of different sorts of foodstuff crowding the dining table. Bottles of oil, bags of flour, rice, and dry legumes, smaller amounts of roasted nuts and dried dates and figs, and lastly, even some kinds of biscuits sprinkled with sesame seeds. Alongside them on the table was a handwritten message on a piece of paper:

' _Meet me in my father's study, the one with the big mirror. Come as soon as you see this.'_

Trevor and Sypha narrowed their eyes at this note, then side-eyed each other.

'He won't notice, or mind, if we take just a handful of each, and a couple of biscuits,' Trevor said and pointed at the nuts and dry fruits.

To his surprise, Sypha nodded. 'Agreed.'

And so, they left the kitchen with their hands full, happily snacking away towards Dracula's grand study. They wolfed down the last of their loot well before they got to the last corridor, ready to meet with the third member of their group.

Just when they were about to come to the door, however, Sypha stepped in front of her friend and grabbed his shoulders, bringing him to a grinding halt. For a moment, Trevor thought from her scowl that she was going to snap at him for some reason and so, he tensed up and scowled back. Instead of having to defend himself, though, he soon had to stifle a chuckle: rather than verbally assaulting him, Sypha merely shook her head at him and, with the air of a harried mother of six, swept some very visible sesame seeds and biscuit crumbs off his shirt.

'Better?' Trevor asked when they were gone.

'Better,' Sypha responded as she smoothed his shirt with one last swipe.

After this they finally entered the study. There, they found Alucard sitting at a desk with his back towards the door, accompanied by a tall stack of papers. As soon as he heard his friend's steps, he surprised them by standing up. Upon facing his friends, they couldn't help but to notice that the half-vampire looked somewhat... haggard.

'About time you showed up,' he said, either not realising or caring this was exactly what he had said the day before. He began walking towards them in a hurry, looking annoyed. 'There's something you need to see.'

When he sped past them, Trevor and Sypha shared a bewildered look of concern before going after him.

'Is this somehow related to all the dry goods on the kitchen table?' Trevor asked the half-vampire.

'Slightly,' Alucard admitted. 'I found those foodstuffs last night, when I was compelled to seach through the living quarters adjacent to the two places where I think night creatures were forged,' he explained. 'If you needed any more evidence that my father had humans working for him, then there it is: self-respecting vampires don't go around eating food made of dry peas or lentils any more than humans go around eating hay.'

Trevor sneered. 'Oh, and who would these hard workers be, cup bearers?' he asked in a facetious tone. 'Laundry maids? Maybe gardeners? Were they paid well?'

Alucard rolled his eyes. 'Forgemasters, Belmont,' he droned. 'No matter how much you dislike the idea, there really is no other explanation – my father must have gotten those night creatures somewhere and vampire kind has never produced a single forgemaster. And since forged night creatures are loyal only to their conjurer, it's more than likely that these human forgemasters' goals aligned with my fathers',' the dhampir went on.

'Their mind could have been warped by evil magic,' Sypha suggested.

'I _suppose_ ,' Alucard enunciated, more than a little frustrated at this point. 'I don't see why you'd need to reach for that, though, when you as a Speaker should know humans are perfectly capable of persuading themselves _by_ themselves into doing atrocities that consume entire populations.'

The three continued discussing this, speculating why a human would willingly participating in the destruction of the rest of humankind. The theory that the three were least split on ended up being one where some madman had thought it possible to get a couple of people through the purge and start humanity over with a new Adam and Eve. But really, who knew.

When the heroes arrived at their destination, Alucard stopped a few paces away from the large wooden door ahead and gestured at his friends to do the same,

'Don't make any loud noises,' he told them in a quiet voice.

'Why?' Sypha asked.

'You'll see in a moment,' Alucard muttered and continued onwards.

When he got to the entrance, he pressed down the door handle and opened the door carefully. After ushering his friends inside the spacious room beyond, he stayed behind to shut the door while the vampire hunter and the mage looked around. Nothing seemed immediately suspicious about the place beyond the large blood-stained table in the middle and so, after peering behind it and seeing nothing, they turned around and gave expectant looks to Alucard, who was a few steps behind them.

Suddenly, the dhampir perked up and pointed at a kind of drawer or, rather, under it. 'Ah. There's one of them,' he said.

Both full-blooded humans swiveled their heads to look in the direction he was pointing at, straining their eyes. Sypha leaned down a little and cocked her head to see underneath the piece of furniture and saw something glowing faintly in its shadow. It was a pair of blue eyes belonging to something small.

'It's.... a cat?' the mage said, puzzled.

Hearing this, Trevor hunched down a little to see what she was seeing. Whilst he did this, a creature other than the one under the drawer locked onto him. The vampire hunter was the first thing it saw as it pushed its way through a door that was slightly ajar, leading to a smaller room adjacent to this one. Once the creature was through the door, it headed towards its mark, its claws skittering lightly against the floor as it approached Trevor from behind. That was a risky move, however, as it almost earned the creature a throwing knife in its face. As soon as the vampire hunter heard heavy breathing coming from behind him, his instincts kicked in and he did two things at once: he grabbed a throwing knife and leapt up on the bloodied table next to him.

'Sypha look out!' he warned his friend next to him and came close to throwing the blade at his small target.

He held himself back in the nick of time, persuaded to do so by the fact that the creature had stopped in its tracks. Surprised by its target suddenly jumping out of the way, it looked up at Trevor with its single glowing blue eye and tilted its head inquisitively. The vampire hunter grimaced at the sight of this small, black, quadrupedal creature, as it had a partially exposed skull, showing an empty socket where its other eye should have been, and its one intact front limb was paired with one that was nothing but bone. Yet, Trevor's comrades paid it little mind: instead of gawking at the creature, they just glimpsed at it before they joined it in staring at the vampire hunter standing on the table.

'W-what...' Alucard stammered at Trevor, being at a loss of words for a moment. Finally, despite being dumbstruck by the absurdity of the situation, he managed an incredulous question: 'What on earth are you doing?' He then paused and gestured limply at the little black creature. 'It's a _dog,_ Belmont,' he said like he was speaking to an idiot. 'A dog the size of a _loaf of bread_.'

'What?' Trevor spat, glaring at the creature that gazed up at him from the floor. 'Never mind that it's clearly undead,' he huffed and pointed at it, 'where the fuck is its snout?'

Seeing a hand outstretched at it, the little black dog wagged its curly tail and its already somewhat noisy breaths through its stump of a snout became noisier. It couldn't do much about the vampire hunter being out of reach, so it had to go for a different recipient of its enthusiastic greetings: with that in mind it fixed its blue eye on Sypha. With an energetic waddle, it went to check her out instead.

'That's... just how these things are, or so I've read,' Alucard answered hesitantly and walked closer to Sypha to keep the animal in his line of sight. 'They're a kind of lapdog that comes from China. That undead cat is of similar origin, I think,' he added, pointing his thumb at the dark-faced but mostly white cat under the drawer.

Meanwhile, the reanimated dog reached Sypha, who tensed and grimaced, not sure how to handle it. After a moment of indecision, she decided to do nothing, just gritting her teeth and watching as the animal began snuffling at her feet and the hem of her skirt.

'There's a fox lurking in here somewhere as well, probably in there,' Alucard went on and gestured at the door the dog had come from. Lastly, he looked at a scattering of feathers on the floor, near the wall. 'There was an owl too, apparently, but it's...'

The half-vampire stopped himself and furrowed his brows. After a moment of what appeared to be an internal struggle to find the words, he seemed to die inside just a little.

'It's... not _there_ , anymore,' he said in a hollow voice. 'It's un-... animated _._ The others have eaten most of it...'

Trevor hemmed as he put his throwing knife back into its holster. 'We would've understood ”dead” even in this context, I think,' he told the half-vampire. He walked across the table, then dropped down behind his friends' backs.

Alucard let out a tired, disappointed sigh. 'Anyway,' he went on, 'I heard some bizarre noises coming from here last night, so I came to see what it was about – it was the cat and the fox, they were fighting. They must have been hiding both times that we checked these rooms.'

The half-vampire let out a sigh and swept his forehead with his hand. As if recognising this as a sign of something nice about to happen, the undead dog moved on from Sypha to Alucard and stood up on its hind limbs, taking support from his shins with its front paws. Snorting with every single breath, it panted and wagged its little tail furiously.

'I started wondering what _else_ we might have missed around the castle, so I swept through this god-forsaken maze all night,' Alucard went on, ignoring the dog. 'Thankfully, I didn't find any more undead animals, much less monsters. But I did find those oil bottles and dry goods you saw and I figured you could use them to complement your travel rations.'

Sypha gave her fatigued friend a look of sympathy, then leaned down to beckon the undead dog away from him. Upon being whistled at, the dog perked its little ears and, seeing the Speaker pat her knees at it, it stepped down and waddled back to her. Reluctantly, Sypha forced a patient smile on her face and offered her hand to the dog for inspection.

'So,' Alucard spoke out and also turned his attention to her. 'Is there _anything_ you know about devil forgemasters and their servants that I might not, Sypha?'

The magician shrugged. 'Raising the dead is taboo to us Speakers, so... I doubt it,' she responded. The dog began licking her fingers with its cold tongue, which made her wince a little, but as soon as she regained her composure, she continued: 'I know of stories where necromancers and devil forgemasters make an appearance, but little about how they do what they do. All I really have is that they can reanimate corpses, summon spirits of the damned into them, then have them do their bidding.'

'You wouldn't happen to know what keeps reanimated corpses without demonic possession, hmm, _alive,_ would you?' Alucard asked, nodding at the dog.

'Flesh and blood of the living, probably,' Sypha said casually, still looking down at the hand-licking, tail-wagging animal.

'Are you sure you want to have your hand that close to that thing's mouth, then?' Trevor asked from behind her. 'Or what I at least _think_ is its mouth.'

'He seems friendly enough,' Sypha defended the dog. She moved her hand on top the animal's head and, very careful not to touch bits of exposed flesh or skull, gave it a gentle pat. 'He acts like a completely normal animal as far as I can tell. These poor things probably don't have a clue what has happened to them.'

Alucard let out a long, troubled sigh. 'I suppose I could just keep them locked here and feed them pig bones and other scraps until I decide what to do with them,' he pondered out loud.

'Might want to give them a swift merciful death if they start looking too hungrily at your soul, _especially_ this creepy bugger here,' Trevor commented, wrinking his nose at the dog.

His dhampir comrade sneered and glanced at him over his shoulder, then turned his attention to the Speaker magician still keeping the undead animal busy.

'Sypha... You saw how he jumped on the table at the sight of this _small harmless lapdog_ , right?' he asked as if the vampire hunter wasn't there. 'I'm starting to think this thing we thought was the last son of the Belmont clan is actually a cat of unusual size, disguised as a man.'

Sypha clicked her tongue and rolled her eyes.

'Just let it go, will you?' she told Alucard without looking at him. 'Instincts and reflexes like that are probably why he's still alive, traveling all alone on foot since he was a young boy.'

Alucard scrunched his nose a little in disappointment, then shot a glare at Trevor. The vampire hunter responded by flashing him a victorious smirk – the judge had spoken. Reluctantly accepting his defeat, Alucard shook his head and went back to talking about the forgemasters and what he thought might have happened to them. Their corpses hadn't been among the defeated, after all. In the end, all the trio was left with was just another handful of guesses that couldn't be substantiated.

Upon moving on from the forgemaster's workshop, Sypha suggested that she did the cooking in Alucard's place. He was pretty tired and annoyed, after all, and she had a hankering for something she could make with the ample amounts of flour and oil they'd been blessed with. Alucard had no objections to this and so it was settled: he would go work on his own projects and maybe rest a little, Trevor would go tend to the living animals' needs, and Sypha would start her creative process by going out to forage some more wild onions.

This was pretty much perfect, Trevor thought. With Sypha busy, he had a chance to have a word alone with the dour dhampir, provided he didn't just immediately go to sleep. With that in mind, the vampire hunter took care of the pigs and the horses in a bit of a hurry before he returned upstairs.

One problem though: he wasn't sure where Alucard was. He could have been in his room, in the kitchen, or Dracula's grand study – that place he and Sypha had found him in earlier – then there was the lesser study, which was... where, exactly? He would think about that when he had checked the other places first, he supposed.

He started with the grand study since it was the closest one. When he arrived at the big, tall, round room, he waltzed right in through the open double doors and marveled once more at the giant hole Dracula's fireball attack had melted in one of the walls. There was other damage as well: there was a hole in the ceiling, some bookshelves had been smashed, and the pieces of the distance mirror now lay all over the floor in and around a strange pit – according to Alucard, the pieces had previously floated over it. There was no sign of Alucard himself in the study, though, which was a shame.

'Damn,' the man cursed, then begun to turn on his heels to leave.

As soon as he saw what was behind him, he had himself a bit of a fright: Alucard was _right there_ , standing just a couple of paces away from him.

'So much for those instincts and reflexes,' he said with an unimpressed hem and tapped the side of his head lightly with the cover of a small book he was holding. 'I could have killed you many times over by now.'

'Oh piss off,' Trevor growled. 'You used some sort of trick to do that.'

'And what of it? You're a vampire hunter, you should know the tricks of your prey like the back of your hand,' the dhampir scoffed.

'Properly trained in the art only to the ripe old age of twelve or something...' the Belmont heir grumbled.

Alucard shrugged aloofly at this. 'Anyway... what brings you here? Does Sypha need my help with the electric ovens after all?' he asked and folded his arms.

'Not that I know of,' Trevor responded. 'But, I _am_ here to talk about Sypha... She has a thing for me, doesn't she?'

Any semblance of an expression melted off of Alucard's face, leaving him with nothing but a blank, drab stare.

'Oh lord,' he spoke in a low monotone voice. 'You're not here to _brag_ , are you.'

Trevor shrugged twitchily and looked away for a moment. 'Well... maybe a little,' he admitted. 'But, now that I know I was right, I'm here mostly to figure out how to deal with this in a way that doesn't lead to my trip with her ending in me buried in a shallow grave somewhere on Buzău Mountains.'

Alucard raised a brow. 'So you really are that terrible with women, huh.'

'No, I'm _great_ with women,' Trevor corrected him. 'It's their husbands and fathers and other next of kin that I usually have problems with, _if_ they find out about me before I leave town.'

The dhampir made a face, seeming disgusted. Nevertheless, he reminded Trevor, 'Sypha's next of kin are all _Speakers.'_

'They might as well be holy martyrs for all the difference it makes, which it doesn't,' the vampire hunter jeered. 'When you're a Belmont and you defile someone's precious little girl, or even give them reason to think you _might_ have done so, that's when the torches, pitchforks, and teams of hunting dogs come out, always'

Hearing that made Alucard's face twist with utter revulsion. 'Don't talk about _defiling_ Sypha,' he said sharply. 'And don't call her a ”precious little girl” either, it's disturbing.'

'Fine, I won't,' Trevor conceded, throwing his hands up. 'But my point still stands: I'm in trouble here. I'm not great at being delicate, if you can believe that, yet I'd really much rather part ways with Sypha and her tribe in friendly terms. So, if you would like to repay me for giving you my basement, any tips on how to turn her down nicely would be appreciated.'

'Turn her down?' Alucard repeated, mildly surprised. Then, narrowing his eyes, he added: 'Also, didn't you just say you're great with women?'

'Well...' Trevor said with a grimace and averted his gaze. 'Great at haggling with whores and getting a few drinks and a warm bed off of widows and unhappily married women,' he specified. 'I feel like those skills aren't going to help me curb Sypha's enthusiasm in a tasteful, polite way.'

'So you're really not even considering accepting her advances,' the puzzled half-vampire reiterated.

'Of course not,' Trevor huffed, offended. 'She's a good girl, _and_ a frighteningly powerful magician, she's just about the last person I'm going to try to take advantage of _._ '

'I didn't say anything about taking advantage of her,' his comrade pointed out.

'Well you might as well have, because she would no doubt see a short fling as such and anything long-term just isn't an option,' Trevor countered. 'I mean, do I look like the kind of person who'd like to go sober, don the blue robe, and start memorising ancient nursery rhymes?' he asked and gestured at himself from head to toe.

Alucard wasn't the least bit swayed. 'What if she wants to go with you instead of staying with her people?' he asked.

This got a snort out of the vampire hunter. 'Yeah, no,' he sneered. 'This isn't the first time I've had a good girl throw herself at me – I know not to fall for it,' he said self-assuredly. 'Sypha's never been this isolated and we're probably the first non-Speaker men she's ever spent quality time with: I'm just a novelty to her. When she's back to talking to normal people again and the novelty wears off, she'll start remembering why she didn't like me to start with.'

His comrade, who had grown increasingly restless listening to this, hung his head a little and shook it. 'She really does have her work cut out for her, doesn't she...' he mumbled.

'Excuse me?' Trevor questioned.

The dhampir raised his head glanced at him before gazing past him, at the desk he had been meaning to get to at some point. 'How about you just give Sypha a chance, Belmont?' he asked nonchalantly. 'You might at least rediscover the fact that she's as worldly as you are.'

Trevor, balking at this perceived betrayal, was about to object, but Alucard saw it a mile away and intercepted it.

'Also,' he went on, shooting the Belmont heir with a deterring glare, 'this is the only tip I'm going to give you: you shouldn't worry about the Codrii Speakers. They're not idiots, they knew what was going to happen when they left Sypha with someone like you.'

With that, he sidestepped the vampire hunter, who was gawking at him in dismay. 'Now if you'll excuse me,' he said, beginning to walk towards the back of the room. 'I have work to do.'

Whilst Alucard opened his book and flipped the pages in search of a particular page, finding it just as he reached his father's desk and the papers sprawled on it, Trevor was left staring into the middle distance with a concerned frown. Wheels were turning in his head as his mind began connecting some dots. What Alucard had just said... The way Sypha had spoken about fate and such... Her being into him all of a sudden... That fucking Speaker legend.

' _Oh_ ,' Trevor voiced, blinking a couple of times. Then, as the realisation hit him fully, he exclaimed: 'Wait a fucking second!'

He spun on his heels to face Alucard, who was giving him an annoyed look over his shoulder. Trevor, in a voice brimming with mirth, like he had just figured out someone's hilarious prank, asked: 'This is all about some ridiculous prophecy horseshit again, isn't it?'

The half-vampire just stared at him for a moment, a little wide-eyed. 'Uhhh...' he droned, unusually unsure what to say.

This was enough confirmation to Trevor.

'Ahh, I knew it, I fucking _knew_ it, ' he said, exhilarated that he had been right. 'I _knew_ something was off.'

Alucard turned around stiffly to fully face his comrade. 'Uh, Trevor...' he spoke out, too quietly to snap the vampire hunter out of his joy of discovery.

'Shit, it all makes sense now,' Trevor went on, not paying any attention to him. He stroked his chin pensively and paced around a little, too pumped to stay still. 'Sypha takes that nonsense so seriously, of _course_ she would talk herself into having feelings for me just because. Bloody hell.'

Having had quite enough of this, Alucard straightened his back and, after taking a deep breath, called out sharply and sternly: 'Trevor!'

Finally, the vampire hunter halted and looked back at him. 'What?' he replied, not understaning why the dhampir had taken such a tone with him, or even called him by his first name.

'What are you going to do with this information?' Alucard demanded to know.

Trevor let out an incredulous huff and shrugged exaggeratedly. 'The right thing, of course,' he stated, as if that answered anything.

'Which is?' Alucard questioned doubtfully.

'Oh, it's pretty simple,' Trevor said. 'I'm going to act like nothing's going on until we get to Sypha's tribe. I'll wait till the darkness of night and then, while everyone else is a asleep, I'm going to make a run for it! I'll take Speakers holding a bit of a grudge for me over arguing with them about _fate_ or _destiny_ or rubbish like that any day.'

Alucard, supremely frustrated but also exhausted, let out an exasperated sigh and rubbed his temples with his fingers.

'Just...' he began, not even sure what to follow that with. 'Give her a chance, Trevor. That's all anyone's asking of you.'

Trevor hemmed. 'Well, I'm stuck with her until we actually find the caravan, aren't I,' he pointed out. 'She's got till then to make her case... though I really doubt she has much of one.'

Having said this, the Belmont heir turned around and took a step towards the door. 'Anyway, nice chat we had here, Alucard,' he told his comrade over his shoulder. He then raised his hand to bid him goodbye as he walked away. 'See you at dinner.'

With that, Alucard watched wordlessly as the vampire hunter passed the remains of the lifeless distance mirror, reached the tall door, and disappeared out into the corridor beyond. After staring at the empty archway in silence for a moment, he emptied his lungs with a deep, tired exhale, then acknowledged what he had just brought on himself.

'Great... She's going to kill me if she finds out.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Those were Isaac's snacks.


	4. The Lion, the Scholar and the Blue Robe

The eye of the stone eye cyclops was iridescent, like that of a fish. Despite her disgust at it and the puncture wound in it, Sypha couldn't stop staring into it – it brought back fleeting memories she had of her time as a statue. She remembered having stared into the eye from up close like this before: the monster had crouched in front of her, brought its head down to her level, and roared right into her face for some reason. It had also stood over her, holding its tree trunk-like foot over her as if to crush her, only to step over her. When the realisation finally came to her, it made her shudder: it had done all that just to milk more fear out of her, hadn't it? What a vile creature – good thing it was dead.

'Hmph. Serves you right,' she murmured at her tormentor and gave its carcass a half-hearted kick.

To her chagrin, this caught the eye of her grandfather, who was standing somewhere behind her across the underground hall.

'Sypha,' his somewhat frail voice called for her. 'Please step away from that thing, it makes me nervous to see you stand so close to it.'

Sypha sighed and rolled her eyes. She did comply, however: she turned around and walked away from the carcass with her arms folded. 'It's _dead_ , though,' she reminded the old man.

The Elder didn't comment on that, only returned to say something to Arn in a quiet enough voice that she couldn't hear it. Hemming softly, Sypha walked towards them, then past them, without looking at either one. She felt their eyes on her anyway as she walked towards the exit, the one that Belmont had very recently herded them all through.

When she reached the rubble that her saviour had fallen down with, she stopped, then looked up at the hole above that he had come through. The floor had held up just fine when she had walked on it but that barbarian was just that much heavier, she supposed. Perhaps he had even jumped on the floor like a child into a puddle, to test its integrity.

In the midst of these ponderings, Sypha suddenly became aware of how quiet the underground hall had become. The murmurings of her nine tribe members huddled together near the wall to her right had ceased, also Arn and her grandfather hadn't said anything in a while. Without even seeing it for herself, Sypha knew: they were all looking at her, expectantly.

It was Arn's vaguely scornful voice that finally broke the silence. 'Are you not going to go save your Hunter, _Scholar of Magic_?'

Sypha winced.

Arn went on: 'I doubt even seeing your spells and your violent streak can make the townsfolk like us any _less_ at this point.'

'Arn, please...' the Elder said in a gentle scolding tone. 'This is a bad time.'

The young man turned to him with his ire. 'You are too lenient with her as always, Elder!' he scolded back. 'First, she declares herself the prophesised Scholar and insists on tempting fate by seeking the Sleeping Soldier alone. Now that the elements of the Story are actually present, she shirks her duty!'

Arn paused, catching himself before he let himself become too agitated. His words hung heavy in the air until he let out a quiet huff and continued his assault more calmly.

'And I can guess why, too,' he said in a lowered voice. 'It is because she has realised that she does not like how the story of her conquest ends. For _her_ , anyway.'

Sypha swallowed hard and, finally, turned around to face her tribe. She hadn't wanted to show them her expression, but there it was, for all of them to see: she was bitter and she was ashamed.

'Well excuse _me_ , Arn,' she spat, 'for having misgivings about becoming a beleaguered wife to a brutish, apathetic drunk...'

Arn was about to chime in, but Sypha cut him off with a raise of her hand.

'Oh, no worries, though,' she scoffed, having already mostly regained her composure. 'I'm not about to leave him to die.'

She spun on her heels, intending to step around the rubble.

'I was just about to go after him, believe it or not,' she informed him detachedly. 'I am not letting him fight this war for me – I don't know what I'm here for if it's not to fight it myself.'

Her grandfather's voice called for her in haste: 'Sypha wait...'

Sypha looked over her shoulder and saw that he was hurrying towards her. She turned back around for him, just in time for him to surprise her by reaching at her face and placing a reassuring hand on her cheek.

'Please do not take the Story too literally, my child,' he urged. 'Do we not know from the very existence of a multitude of different versions of it that it has accumulated innocent embellishments over time?' he reasoned, pleading. 'In some versions the Scholar is a man, even! And truly, if there is any part that I would suspect to be added only to make an ending of a story feel more satisfying, it is romance.'

Sypha's shoulders slumped and her gaze dropped. She placed her hand on top of her grandfather's hand, saddened by how his skin had become dry and papery.

'I know, Grandfather,' she said quietly.

Relieved, the old man smiled at her sudden meekness. 'Also,' he began, then chuckled, 'I do not believe Belmont is as bad as you think.'

Sypha immediately tensed and looked back up at her grandfather, frowning. _Scowling_.

'Hardship can bring out the worst in people and temporarily thwart their better angels,' the Elder went on. 'It has certainly happened to the people of this city, but you do not judge them all hopeless because of that, do you? Surely you can afford to extend that mercy to Belmont as well.'

'You are actually fond of him, aren't you?' his granddaughter asked incredulously. 'What on earth do you see in him?'

The Elder laughed. With a mischievous glint in his eye, he answered: 'A lion, my angel.'

The puzzled cock of Sypha's brow was exactly the response he had wanted, this much was evidenced by the delight in his voice.

'He is a beast of a man, yes, that is true,' he elaborated, 'but just as certainly, he is the noblest kind of beast there is.'

This did not lessen Sypha's bewilderment even the least bit. She looked at Arn, who had voluntarily melted into the background, but the young man merely shrugged at her wordless plea for help. The Speaker magician rolled her eyes and sighed.

'So he is an animal, then,' she said. She let her hand fall off of her grandfather's hand and down to her side. 'How encouraging. Really makes me want to follow him to the ends of the earth.'

The Elder chuckled and placed his hand on Sypha's shoulder instead of her cheek. 'None of us are unlike animals, my child,' he assured her.

He turned around to regard the rest of his tribe while pulling his granddaughter to his side. He gestured at his flock, who were all giving their leader inquisitive looks.

'Look at us Speakers, for example,' the Elder told Sypha. 'Have we not been born as little birds of the sky, loving over all else our freedom to sing our songs and to flock and migrate wherever we please?'

'Uhhh...' Sypha droned. She frantically searched her loved ones' faces for signs of being offended. 'I... I guess so...? Unless you would rather not be called animals, in which case no...?'

The Elder brushed her concerns aside. 'Yes, we are all birds of a feather,' he said, then sighed wistfully. 'All of us except _you_ , Sypha,' he continued and squeezed his granddaughter's shoulder. 'You are something else entirely, have always been.'

Hearing these words, Sypha froze in place, staring wide-eyed at her fellow Speakers huddled near the wall. They began glancing around, suddenly finding it difficult to return their youngest member's gaze. The magician then looked at Arn pleadingly, only to have him avert his eyes from her as well.

'… _Oh_ ,' Sypha voiced quietly.

Just as despair was about to set in, her grandfather distracted her from it. He stepped in front of her and grasped her both shoulders, then looked her dead in the eye.

'My child, I never knew you would be the Scholar of legend,' he said sternly, 'but I have hoped just as much as I have feared that you would receive a special calling that would make use of your gift.'

He knitted his brows and swallowed, summoning all his resolve. 'You go out there and fight, Sypha,' he urged her. 'Remind Wallachia that arcane arts do not only serve evil!'

Sypha balked for a moment, then furrowed her brows in determination. Indeed, the fate of Wallachian people was much more important than any of this!

'Of course,' she responded, nodding.

She did not have to pry herself loose from her grandfather's grip as she took a step back from him, he let go quite readily. As she was about to turn around and walk around the rubble to the exit, she stopped once more and looked over at Arn.

'One thing, though!' she said. She pointed her thumb at the young man. 'Arn's not some little bird either.'

Arn raised an eyebrow.

'He's an ass.'

'Ex _ **cuse**_ me? _'_ the young man snarled.

Sypha stuck her tongue out at him, then finally turned around and ran off. Arn was left glowering in her direction while the Elder and the rest of the Codrii Speakers cast questioning, mildly sympathetic glances at him.

'Well,' the scorned man soon sighed. 'At least asses are humble, hard-working animals.'

Meanwhile, Sypha hurried through the tunnels and up to the higher levels, looking for the exit that she and Belmont had found wandering through the place. The catacombs seemed to run all throughout the city and there were many entry points, cleverly hidden of course. Eventually, she found one such exit, but there was one problem: it wasn't the same one she'd been to before. As she stepped out into the street, she found herself in a completely unfamiliar part of town – where even was she? Why were the streets so empty? How far away was she from the house? Unsure where to go or what to do, Sypha made indecisive noises while her eyes darted around the damaged buildings.

Doing this, a realisation suddenly dawned on her and she looked up. The roofs! Since her grandfather had given her his blessing to use magic openly, she could just fly up there and look around, couldn't she? She wasted no time: she positioned herself and used her fire magic to blast herself off towards the roof of the tallest building around. Unfortunately, she overshot herself a little and found herself extinguishing the flames too early and falling a longer distance than she had intended.

'Oops,' she said as soon as she realised her mistake.

She tried to remedy the problem by cushioning her landing with wind magic, which _kind of_ did the job, although it made her take a tumble. If she hadn't fallen on a flat part of the roof, she might have rolled right off! Oh well. After quickly making sure her sleeves hadn't caught fire, she just brushed this little stumble aside and looked around her.

'Wow...' she breathed out as she saw the ravaged city from a wholly new angle. The view was bleak, yet beautiful: the fiery sunset blossoming in the sky painted reddish-orange streaks on battered corrugated roofs and the evening haze obscured the furthest city walls. Tiny specks of white fluttered down from the heavy dark clouds above: it was snowing. Through the lace curtain of ice crystals, Sypha could see there still were people on the streets several blocks away, looking like ants as they all marched in the same direction. That was where the action was, she reckoned.

With that, she scanned the roofs with a whole different set of eyes: those of someone assessing stepping stones. In no time, she ran across the roof she was on, and upon reaching its sloped edge, she raised one hand in front of her mouth, making a hand signal. A gust of wind manifested around her as her will tore through the air in front of her, peeled it back, and propelled her forwards when it was all thrown behind her, flinging her in a graceful arc over the street far below and onto the building across it. This time her landing was perfect, letting her keep running until she had to jump again. She couldn't suppress a squeal of joy as she flew through the air, over another deep chasm between tall buildings: she had _always_ wanted to do this!

What was wrong with her, though? She was heading to battle, yet she was so calm, or rather, the wrong kind of excited. She knew it was un-Speaker-like, but she couldn't help it, she felt so _free._ No trembling hand on her shoulder, no fearful, judging eyes burning holes on her back, no stern voices pleading her to be patient, show restraint, think of how people might retaliate. Her family was in as much danger as it could be, so she couldn't make it any worse! That was a disturbing thing to feel unburdened by, she knew, but... Well, it was what it was. She could soon die or become some smelly barbarian's broodmare, so she might as well enjoy the few perks her predicament afforded her, she figured.

Where _was_ that barbarian, though? Upon reaching a roof where she could see the house her family had settled in, she could see at a glance that it had been but was no longer the centre of action. The door to the house had collapsed somehow, the wooden cross that had been propped up on a different house nearby had fallen to the ground, and the only people Sypha could see didn't seem to be in a hurry to go anywhere: they looked like they had been left there to lick their wounds. Since they were mostly priests judging by their garb, they probably weren't too inclined to point her in the right direction either.

Where to look next? Sypha let out a pensive hum as she narrowed her eyes and shielded them from the ever heavier snowfall. There was a glow in the distance that could have come from torches... That seemed like her best bet. She hurried towards it, squinting and fluttering her eyelashes every time she flew through a flurry of snowflakes, and she soon found herself on the tail of a mad chase through narrow back alleys. She couldn't see Belmont anywhere, but surely that was what the angry crowd on the streets below was scrambling after, thankfully too busy with that to look up at her.

Sypha sped up, grimacing – she had gone half across the city running and jumping and she was really starting to feel it in her legs. Fortunately, she soon caught up with the lead of the chase, as was helpfully informed by someone yelling: 'He went that way!'

Hearing this, Sypha came to a grinding halt and quickly peered down from the edge of the roof she was on. She couldn't see who had said that but she saw someone who had.

'The square!' a woman shouted at people who were following her. 'He was pointing towards the square!'

Sypha blinked and looked up from the streets. The building across the street from her no longer had a roof and through the holes in the half-collapsed walls, she saw what she assumed was the aforementioned square. She made her way around the broken down building jumping on ones that were more intact until she came to a flat roof right on the edge of the square, where people with their torches and their pikes, swords, and pitchforks were creeping on a single target.

And so, there he was: Trevor Belmont, hunched over as he tried to catch his breath. He didn't have his scruffy winter cloak anymore, making his resemblance to a lion even more tenuous! And he didn't seem to have any weapons, either, or any escape route in mind. Completely surrounded with more and more people flowing in from the back alleys, he had nowhere to run.

Good thing that Sypha was there, then. She raised her hand in front of her and lit a small magical ball of flame that danced above her fingertips. She didn't like the idea of using the elements against innocent people who were in a frenzy only because they had been whipped into one, but she didn't see a choice. Belmont was the Hunter and he had saved her life. Also, if he truly was a lion, he was surely the last one still roaming Europe – there was no way she was going to let him die here!

With that, all hesitation in her mind was purged and her flames burned bright. A wall of fire separated the mob from its prey and the hunt was over: the paltry king of beasts lived to see another day. Sypha joined forces with him, defended people against night creatures, found Alucard, their Sleeping Soldier.

This, of course, meant that the prophecy really was coming true. Although Sypha could have eased her apprehension concerning her future by reminding herself of what her grandfather had said about the legend, she felt like hanging her hopes on that was a false solution. She couldn't let her resolve waver no matter what happened – the lives of all Wallachians were on the line. So instead, she just accepted her unpleasant gut feeling: something was going to happen and whatever it was, it was going to be a point of no return. As long as that something included putting an end to the darkness that threatened to engulf the land, it was a happy enough ending to this story she had the honour to be part of and she would fight for it with everything she had.

Her grandfather seemed none the wiser about this: he spoke no more about her prophesised fate during the Codrii Speakers' last days in Greşit, only beamed at her with pride and did what he could to prepare her for her many battles ahead. The other Speakers were sheepish around her now but they were supportive of her all the same, giving her words of encouragement and openly admiring how well she was coping in these dangerous times. Only one of her people seemed unconvinced by the brave face she was putting on: Arn. Sypha wondered when he was going to just come out and say it until finally, on the day the Codrii Speakers were supposed to get back on the road, he asked to speak to her in private.

'You do not believe you will be returning to us, do you?' he asked of her as soon as they were alone, standing near the stables where the Speakers had gotten their newest wagon and horses.

Sypha grimaced and rubbed the back of her neck as she looked away.

'It... feels like it would be naïve to expect that a prophecy will come true except for just the parts one does not like,' she admitted.

Arn sighed and shook his head. He looked around him and fidgeted a little, hesitating, before he spoke up again.

'Look,' he began reluctantly, 'I still stand by my beliefs. I really do think Speakers should be a force for peace and healing and I wish that you who insist on learning combative arts would call yourselves something else.'

'Uhuh,' Sypha said flatly, not the least bit surprised.

'But,' Arn continued calmly, 'I am no idiot. This is obviously the wrong time to take _anything_ away from those few who can put a dent in the night hordes, even just a name, a single word. Also, I owe it to Elder to honour his wishes.'

He furrowed his brows and glowered intently at his fellow Speaker, who returned the look with scepticism.

'What I mean to say is,' the young man said in a lowered voice and placed his hand on Sypha's shoulder, 'as long as you carry no evil in your heart, you are always welcome back to the Codrii Speakers, my sister. No questions asked.'

Now this on the other hand, this _was_ a bit surprising. It made Sypha snicker quietly and brought a wistful half-smile on her face as she gave her dear quarrelsome brother's hand a gentle pat.

'...Thank you,' she said a little awkwardly.

Arn nodded. 'Return to us if that man treats you poorly. Do not give him anything he does not deserve.' he told her sternly. 'If he is truly bound to you by fate, then surely fate will make him work to earn your trust and respect.'

This earned him a nervous chuckle. 'Oh, do not worry,' Sypha assured him, 'I am only going easy on him until Dracula's reign of terror is over.'

'Good,' Arn commended immediately, frowning. 'That man is _terribly_ rude.'

With this, he was about to withdraw his hand and step away but the forlorn look in Sypha's eyes prompted him to stop.

'Is something the matter?' Arn questioned.

His sister swallowed hard and her jaw quivered a little as she moistened her lower lip in tense silence.

'Do you know what scary thought I had?' she then asked in a strained voice. Before the young man could hazard a guess, she answered her own question: 'I can't imagine staying with him instead of returning unless... unless none of you are there when all of this is over.'

As soon as he heard this, Arn reached around her shoulders and pulled her into a tight hug.

'Do not think of such things!' he commanded. 'We will be as wise and careful and persistent as we have ever been. And we are not just far from defenceless without you, we will be much further from danger than you.'

Sypha laughed in wistful relief against his shoulder. 'I know. I know,' she assured her brother as she hugged him back. 'I will do my best not to think about this.'

More bittersweet farewells were soon to follow this exchange. Sypha had to bid her entire beloved family a wistful farewell as they departed, all packed on a single wagon. Left standing at the city gates alone with Belmont, she very graciously gave him a clearly signaled chance to sway her opinion of him to a more positive one with a simple offering of his condolences and... after a promising start, he went and botched it. In fact, he almost went out of his way to botch it. Sypha wasn't sure what she had expected – Belmont was an unrepentantly unkind person and he knew it... up until one had the gall to address him as such, at least.

That set the tone for the rest of their stay in Greşit. Although Sypha tried to put her personal grievances aside, she couldn't help but to feel at least a twinge of despair whenever she looked at Belmont. When he wasn't drinking or sleeping or just wandering around, he was typically engaging in needless posturing against Alucard, like a territorial animal with a rival. And Alucard, damn him, kept encouraging him.

Well, since Belmont insisted on acting like an animal, Sypha dealt with him like one, too. Her grandfather giving her the idea that the vampire hunter was a beast might have actually been an unintentional stroke of genius on his part: Sypha loathed gross, disrespectful men but she liked animals. Thinking of Belmont as a dim-witted beast, then, made his failings much easier to tolerate.

Thanks to this, she managed to be gentle, yet firm: when things between him and Alucard threatened to get too heated, she just dragged the petulant oaf away by his hackles as if he was a dog growling at its reflection, then kept stepping between him and his unbeatable adversary if he tried to go back. Whenever he did something much more rotten than that, she chalked it up to foolishness until there was concrete evidence of malice. Whenever he was indeed being foolish, she reminded herself of what she was dealing with by imagining that witless dog and its reflection again. Whenever she required him to do something, she articulated her need and the consequences of not meeting it very clearly, without leaving him room for interpretation or argument.

Although she couldn't have been much more condescending than this, her approach just... worked. It didn't make fast friends of them, but it got things done, and because of the nature of their undertaking, that was far more important. Thus, Belmont continued to regard her with either indifference or annoyance and she regarded him like an unruly dog entrusted in her care: she might not have liked him but she had taken him in so his well-being was her responsibility for the time being. He could go drink himself to death all he wanted _after_ they had killed Dracula.

And so, they didn't have very riveting conversations at first, even when all they had to amuse themselves with was talking. When the trio left Greşit on a covered wagon, it was Alucard and Sypha that did most of the talking while Belmont sat quietly, brooding over the fact that Sypha hadn't let him get blind drunk to make being stuck on wagon with them more tolerable. His silence was welcome as far as Sypha was concerned – she had much to learn about vampires and Alucard, being what he happened to be, was a most suitable teacher.

Belmont didn't mope forever, though. During Sypha's and Alucard's conversation about all the sophisticated technology vampires sported, the vampire hunter finally spoke up, quite without warning too.

'Bloody typical of vampires, innit?' he sneered. He went on disdainfully. 'They have the strength of several men each. They have all the time in the world. And what do they do with it? Use it to build unnecessarily complex contraptions, to theoretically save a _modicum_ of time and effort.'

Sypha, who was holding the reins and looking at Belmont sitting right next to her, quickly side-eyed at Alucard, who sat in the back of the wagon. From the way the dhampir was narrowing his eyes and crinkling his nose in loathing, he didn't seem like he was about to let Belmont's remark go. The two bickering would have been annoying, Sypha reckoned, so she decided to try to derail the conversation.

'Do you even notice how you talk like a nobleman sometimes?' she asked Belmont.

The vampire hunter did a double take, then squinted at her. 'I what?' he questioned, baffled. Then, as his mind caught up to his mouth, he denied: 'No. I don't talk _anything_ like a nobleman.'

Sypha smirked - once again, she had stumbled onto something that worked.

'Yes you do,' she insisted. 'Just now you said _”modicum_ ” and ” _theoretically._ ” Earlier, I'm pretty sure I heard you say ” _ergo_ ” – do you think commoners throw words like that around?'

The irritated Belmont heir clicked his tongue and folded his arms. 'So I picked up a couple of words in the old days – so what? Doesn't mean I talk like a nobleman,' he defended himself. 'I should know: I used to get told off all the time for being terrible at it when I actually tried.'

Sypha rolled her eyes. Having spent a sizeable chunk of her life arguing with Arn, a much more skilled opponent, she could see in advance just about every argument Belmont could have made and she knew she could wreck whatever play he went with. But, since she was trying to get along with this oaf, she supposed that just knowing that was going to be the victory she had to be satisfied with.

'Look, just–...' she began, then realised how exasperated she sounded and took a moment to regain her composure. She began anew with a more patient and conciliatory tone: 'I was just entertaining the possibility that maybe some people _do_ get unreasonably angry with you, Sir Gets-Punched-in-the-Face-a-Lot, for no fault of your own.'

She turned her attention back to the road ahead as she elaborated casually, 'A lot of people have a quite a bit of resentment for the higher classes and everything they stand for. I can certainly see why, but it gets to be a bit much when _fancy talk_ lands even us Speakers, who reject opulence, in hot water. And since it happens to us, I wouldn't be surprised if it happened to you, too, even when people don't realise you're a Belmont.'

At this point, she glimpsed at the vampire hunter from the corner of her eye to make sure she was being well received. 'That's all,' she chirped in a neutral tone before she looked ahead again. 'Just forget about it.'

Belmont inhaled sharply and opened his mouth, seeming intent on saying something harsh to her. Yet, he made no sound, and after a beat, he shifted uncomfortably in his seat and, without having said anything, just settled down quietly.

'She actually managed to find something about you to compliment and you immediately made her regret it,' Alucard quipped from the back. 'Stellar job, Belmont.'

His comrade grumbled something unintelligible before falling silent again. The whole wagon was quiet for a hot minute, apart from the constant rattle of the wheels and the dull clip-clop of horse hooves on dirt road, until Sypha and Alucard resumed their previous conversation about vampire technology.

Sypha didn't expect anything to come out of this, yet something seemed different about Belmont afterwards. He was more cautious, maybe even a bit awkward. Was it just her, or was he actually feeling a little bad that he had missed a chance to have a normal, peaceful interaction with her? She was completely fine with what had happened, though, and so she was a bit annoyed when she kept constantly getting this feeling that Belmont was evaluating her mood. Preferring to just get along, however, the magician merely held her tongue and did her best to ignore this behaviour.

Alas, that was hardly the only thing she was trying to keep out of her mind. Though she denied it from her comrades and acted like she was just concentrating on their mission, she was quite worried about her family and her future. Not just that, but she was simply lonely – the two half-people that were with her didn't quite make a whole functional human being who could make her feel validated and cared for. Sypha was living with a persistent deficit of intimacy, one she suspected she was going to keep having until this whole adventure was over. She was in desperate need of a reassuring hug from her grandfather but, well, in absence of that, she supposed she should have a moment all to herself to get her thoughts in order.

When the trio finally stopped for the night, then, Sypha delegated chores between herself and her comrades so she could be alone. She removed the horses' tack and released them to graze in a hurry, leaving her at leisure until the Soldier and the Hunter had gathered firewood and whatnot. Sighing deep, she leaned against a wagon wheel and stared quietly up at the night sky, ready to wind down. Unfortunately, just as she did this, Alucard came looking for her from the other side of the wagon.

'Do you want to light the fire or shall we watch that reprobate struggle with a flint and steel?' he asked.

Somewhat startled, Sypha stood straight again and gave her comrade a nervous smile.

'I... I can light it,' she stammered.

She lit the fire and the heroes ”enjoyed” their meager travel rations. They then continued to sit around the flames and swap stories in somewhat better spirits. Not for long, though, because they were unexpectedly met by another group of travelers, probably drawn in by the light from the trio's campfire: a raid party of bloodthirsty night creatures.

Sypha proceeded to watch in disbelief as both of her comrades went their separate ways without discussing any kind of battle strategy with each other and most importantly: her! Her combat experience was still minuscule and elemental magic didn't separate friend from foe, so she could end up seriously hurting them. And so, even though she wanted to go in and help, she stood back and watched as her comrades began taking the enemies down one by one, figuring she needed to be smart and not unnecessarily risk making a mess of their work.

Looking at the battlefield, she noticed something that surprised her: she wasn't the only one with the same idea. Whilst a couple of monsters fought Alucard and Belmont, a huge furry monster and few of those smaller winged creatures that had swarmed Greşit loomed ominously in the background, keeping an eye on the situation. The large monster seemed to take particular interest in Sypha, raising its head high as its red eyes bored into her from the distance.

Exchanging looks with this inhuman, yet at least somewhat intelligent creature, Sypha froze in place and felt a shiver go down her back. Not one of terror, as it ought to have been, but of excitement: that thing was like her, wasn't it? It had some sort of trick up its sleeve. Before she had time to react to this thought, though, the littler monsters saw their chance and took it: Alucard and Belmont had already thinned out the brawlers and so, they and the entire battlefield could be doused in flames. The monsters raised their heads and sent a barrage of fireballs the two men's way.

Caught by surprise, the first wave of these went by Sypha, but not the second one! Before the monsters' new batch of ammunition could bother her comrades, she captured it with her will and flung it right back at its source, downing two of the winged nuisances right away.

Finally, the towering hell beast that had been glaring at her lumbered forward, causing another tingle race down Sypha's spine. The creature's roaring furnace of a gullet expanded and when it opened its large maw, its contents erupted at her, enveloping the Speaker in a blazing inferno. Sypha cleaved through the flames with her magic and let them pass her by, then released a deep exhale as she glared at her adversary. Every single hair on her body stood up as her mind was teased by a wonderful yet messed up thought: what if she stole that thing's fire before it was given momentum, before it had even left its master's body?

When the monster began heating up its furnace again, Sypha went for it without even thinking: she channeled her willpower through her hands, overwhelmed the creature's control over the flames of its own creation. When the monster tried to spit them out, then, the magician just shoved them back down its throat, compressing the heated air. She added the final pulse of pressure with a clasp of her hands, then watched in awe as the monster exploded with the power and thunderous boom of a cannon going off. Flames consumed everything around her enemy and pieces of its carcass flew every which way, scattering soot, blood, and bits of charred flesh all over the snowy landscape.

With that, the battle had been won, to put it mildly. Miraculously, one of the smaller monsters just barely survived the explosion and managed to fly away despite being on fire, but it seemed like an insignificant thing to let go. To Sypha, there was something much more important to address as soon as her comrades were done basking in the glory of victory.

'Yeah, hey,' she growled at the two men. She pointed her thumb at where the big monster had stood, instructing: 'How about next time, you two actually give me some indication of what you are planning to do, unless you want to get caught up in something like _that_.'

The dhampir and the vampire hunter exchanged uncomfortable glances and expressed their apologies, each in his own clumsy way. Sypha wasn't too interested in hearing them, though – she was still jittery and feeling like she was way overdue to collect her thoughts by her lonesome.

'Right. I'll go look for the horses now,' she stated and began walking past her traveling companions. 'Who knows how far they have run off to after hearing a sound like that.'

'Well... they're right over there,' Alucard said and pointed in the opposite direction to where she was going.

Sypha squinted and looked across the dirt road into the darkness and indeed, on the far side of the open area they had stopped at there were two light-coloured, horse-shaped blotches against a dark wall of conifers.

'I'll go get them,' Belmont said and took a step towards the wagon, only to be interrupted by Sypha raising her hand as a sign to stop.

'No, _I'll_ go. I'm the one who scared them with that explosion,' she asserted and went in his stead.

She did this mostly to be out of sight for a while but she wasn't about to tell her comrades that. She fetched the horses' halters and leads from the wagon, then went after them. As soon as she reached the animals she apologised to them profusely for the terrible time they were having and put on their halters. With that done, she peered in the direction of the wagon, making sure Alucard and Belmont weren't up to no good, then let out a relieved sigh and turned her face up to the waxing moon. To feel a bit less alone, she imagined that somewhere out there, someone from her family was looking up at the same moon, wondering if she was doing alright.

Soon, she sighed again, deeper. She finished the thought she'd almost had earlier, before Alucard had interrupted her: no matter what happened, those simple, cozy times she had spent with her people were over, weren't they? Even if Wallachia healed overnight after Dracula's fall, things weren't going to be the same. It was one thing to feel a little out of place among her people for being a bit fierce and drawn to danger, returning to them with all these violent yet thrilling experiences etched into her heart was quite another. She was probably going to have a lot more of them before her adventure was over, too, and she if talked about them to other Speakers, they would look at her as if she was completely alien to them. But, if she kept everything bottled up, she would no doubt fester and grow bitter.

Either way, she would be alone, especially once her grandfather passed on.

Sypha shook her head – that was enough thinking for today! This was _not_ the time to lay awake all night mulling over something she had no chance of preventing. She should instead concentrate on what she could and should do, like preparing for the next day. With that in mind, she turned her attention back to the horses, which were tiredly nibbling at the bark of a young tree. The poor things were still that hungry, huh? She ought to give them a little more grain back at the wagon, then.

As she was about to put her intentions to action, though, she heard a noise behind her and suddenly, her mind was violently pulled back into her body. Still rattled from the recent battle, she went straight back to full alert, spinning quickly on her heels to face whatever was approaching and ready to scorch it to cinders.

The one approaching her was just Belmont, however. The man was just as startled by her unexpected movement as she had been by the sound of his footsteps and so, both of them spent a hot second poised to repel an attack. Before either one had quite recovered from their fright, their eyes met, and when Sypha returned the vampire hunter's intense glare, she had a strange feeling: it was like she was staring into a mirror. In this moment, they were both just wild, witless animals, ready to fight for their lives.

Not for long, though. Out of the two of them, Belmont was the first to recognise the lack of a threat and calm down, relaxing visibly whilst Sypha was still on edge. Seeing that his comrade was taking her time loosening up, he raised an inquisitive eyebrow at her, to which the magician responded by hurrying to straighten her back and fold her arms to appear normal.

'W-what is it?' she asked impatiently.

The vampire hunter scanned her from head to toe, evaluating her again.

'Nothing,' he responded, sounding a little bored. 'I just wondered if there's something wrong with the horses.'

Sypha's brow twitched with annoyance – he hadn't taken even as much as a look at the animals!

'They are fine. I'm just letting them relax a while longer, that's all,' she assured the man.

'Hm. Alright...' he responded, emotion in his voice so faint, it was hard to tell whether he was relieved or disappointed, or either.

After saying this, Belmont almost took a step towards the Speaker but he flinched and hesitated. He seemed to want to come closer, but... instead he just stood where he was, just barely at a proximity where it was still comfortable to speak to someone, and wore an expression that spoke of an internal struggle taking place. He appeared as if he didn't know what to do.

Seeing this, Sypha clicked her tongue and looked away, finding the situation she had been put in against her will to be painfully awkward. Although she reminded herself that his intentions were good, that Belmont was trying his damnest to do a nice thing here by checking up on her, she couldn't help but to be annoyed. Not feeling like accommodating the vampire hunter's unwelcome interruption, she let the heavy silence stretch on while the horses gave the two indifferent looks and munched on strips of bark. If Belmont wanted there to be a conversation, he had to carry it himself.

And he did actually start one, eventually. He scratched his neck and let out a wordless troubled sound before he, finally, spoke up.

'That thing you did with that big bastard... I didn't know you could do that,' he commented.

Sypha shrugged. 'I didn't know either until I tried it,' she said without looking at him.

Her comrade snickered, prompting her to glance at him. He was smirking, looking a little mischievous.

'Did you see how it reacted, before it blew up?' he asked. 'Looked like a bloody cat hacking up a hairball.'

Sypha gave him a blank look. Then, after a beat, her shoulders bounced a little as she let out a soft, tired chuckle.

'It did, didn't it?' she agreed.

Weak as it may have been, that was, in fact, the first time the Belmont heir had intentionally made her laugh. Finally, they'd had that perfectly okay moment that the vampire hunter seemed to think he had owed her. Relieved, Sypha let out a short sigh and all remaining excess tension in her body dissipated, leaving her with just a feeling of emptiness.

'Well, let's just go, I guess,' she then said, telling that to herself as much as her comrade. 'Time to go back.'

With this exchange, Sypha honestly thought that their interactions would get back to that sweet spot they'd had just after leaving Greşit, where she had thought she'd had Belmont pretty well figured out. Instead, the next day brought with it a feeling like she had been tracking and observing a beast from afar, trying to learn its ways, and now it was suddenly watching her back. The vampire hunter had become more attentive, begun asking more personal questions and commenting on things more readily, often saying something mildly provocative and then looking at her expectantly, like he was waiting for her to poke fun at him or come up with follow-up questions. He was _prodding_ her.

Sypha didn't like this at all, at first. She was just barely managing to keep her worsening identity crisis at bay and she didn't trust Belmont around anything sensitive – just about the last thing she wanted was for him to stumble onto one of her many sore spots. Yet, perhaps because she had never been more deprived of closeness in her entire life, she found herself lowering her guard a little. Giving Belmont more slack on his leash. Much to her surprise, she didn't come to regret this: though Belmont didn't express his sympathies for her at times plainly visible anxiety like Alucard was quick to do, he also didn't belittle her or say anything particularly unkind. Instead, he seemed to have become more accommodating to both of his comrades in small, subtle ways. _Very_ subtle ways.

Before she had even taken note of the shift, Sypha's relationship with the vampire hunter had become more playful than truly antagonistic. Once the trio had exhausted topics of actual tactical importance, they began talking about things that were more mundane, at which point it was suddenly Alucard who had less to say - his comrades had traveled much more and they had visited some of the same locations, after all. Thus, he was now the one in the background, merely sniping at Belmont when the opportunity arose, while Belmont and Sypha talked about things like weird local delicacies they had come across in the rural backwaters of Wallachia.

It was during this time Sypha and her Hunter managed to become... friends, one might suppose. This, Sypha admitted, was a lot more in a shorter amount of time than she had thought possible from the outset. Yet, she did still look forward to a time when she could bid him farewell and she didn't see this changing anytime soon.

The point at which she realised this, too, was subject to twisting and shifting to something else was when they finally reached the Belmont estate. She and Alucard followed the last Belmont into the ruins of the grand manor blindly, exchanging perplexed glances as their comrade began to quietly navigate through the place using cues that were invisible to them. The silence was unnerving, so they began asking questions about the life the vampire hunter had led there and how he had lost it, to which he was very reluctant to answer. Quite as if he had never spoken of it out loud, he didn't even seem accustomed to putting any details of it into words.

'Thirteen, fourteen... something like that,' he said about the age when he had lost his home and family. His voice acquired a layer of sarcasm, just barely covering his unease when his guess went lower still: 'Maybe twelve. Who remembers that sort of thing?'

This gave Sypha a sinking feeling. Even as she and her comrades had a cathartic laugh at how even Alucard had enjoyed a longer childhood, she felt queasy. All this time, the way she had managed her new friend like a stray animal had been more than a little on the nose: he had been made to live like one since he had been a _child_. If all that he had been telling her about his life after his family had been taken was true, he had been shunned, despised, and chased out of towns like something that prowled on people's children and livestock in the night... _as a child_.

Just... poor thing. He had all of Sypha's sympathies as she watched him take a few steps through the rubble only to halt and slowly pan his gaze across the desolation around him. He was alert, yet the look in his eyes was distant, as if he was concentrating on sounds and smells only he could sense. In this moment, Sypha could finally kind of see it: the last lion of Wallachia. A tired, scar-riddled hunter turned scavenger, resigned to being the last of his kind, hunted till the end of his days.

This sight made Sypha's heart ache. Someone should do something, she thought. Someone should give him a hug and tell him he wasn't alone anymore. Someone ought to give him enough support that he got back on his feet, got to live a life befitting of a lion again.

And of course, because she just had to become ever more unrecogniseable to herself from before any of this had happened, she would soon yearn to do all of that personally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rewatching the first season for this, I noticed that the man who surprises Trevor in episode four by jumping at the chance to stick a knife into the crooked priest looks to be the same one who warned him about the bishop's men in episode two. Seems like he might have had a personal vendetta going on? Pretty cool.
> 
> Also, if you don't feel at least a little bit sad and nostalgic thinking of a Europe where aurochs, hyenas, and two flavours of lion roam and where you still look forward to playing the next new video game where you go around Indiana Jonesing in haunted graveyards and castles as a Conan the Barbarian looking fellow, I don't know what to tell you.


	5. Charismatic Megafauna Man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has some masturbation in it.
> 
> But, more importantly, in this essay about the symbolism of the colours used in the floor of the Belmont Hold I will-...

Cooking in Dracula's kitchen was a strange experience, but Sypha was quite pleased with herself and her handiwork. The bread had come out perfect and while the filling wasn't _quite_ up to par with Alucard's cooking, it was up there! Oh what fun she'd had with her host's burgeoning spicerack. She could hardly wait to hear what her friends had to say about the results.

Fortunately, she didn't have to wait long: Alucard was readily available in his father's lesser study and, for once, Trevor wasn't too far either. When Sypha went down to the stables in search of the vampire hunter, he had just returned from outside with the geldings and was brushing them down. Even better, it seemed to Sypha that the animals were recovering quite nicely: their eyes were clear, they seemed to move with vigour and purpose, and apparently, they had played a little game of tag with Trevor when he had tried to grab them by their halters, a sign that their spirits were returning to them.

'Looks like we probably _can_ leave in two days' time, provided we take frequent breaks at first,' Sypha told her comrade as he escorted one of the horses into a stall.

'Ugh. Yes, can we please?' Trevor pleaded tiredly whilst he removed the horse's halter. 'I'm so sick of this place.'

Sypha chuckled at him. 'Sure,' she responded smugly, 'but you know what that means, don't you?'

Trevor, forever a hater of being milked for guesses and follow-up questions, gave her an unhappy look. Reluctantly, he enunciated, 'No. I have no idea.'

'We have to do laundry as quick as possible,' Sypha reminded him. 'Today, preferably, so our clothes have time to dry well before we leave. So, you better get over your hatred of this castle and pick something to wear and a room to sleep in tonight, unless you intend to go sleep naked in the ruins.'

Trevor let out just the most troubled sigh and hung his head. 'Fine...' he groaned. 'Let's just go eat...'

The meal was very well received. Unleavened flatbread, a Speaker staple due to being easy to make while traveling, was a hit and even though she wasn't used to cooking with meat, the pork filling was too. Sypha was quite happy to tell Alucard how to make either one himself. As for Trevor... well, depending on how things would go, he was going to eat her flatbread for a time ranging from a week to the rest of his life anyway.

After dinner, Sypha warned the vampire hunter not to run off anywhere far, like he was a little kid, then did a special delivery. She stuffed her written explanation of how she had modified the Belmonts' spell, complete with profuse apologies for her bad handwriting, in a leather binder that Alucard had provided, then grabbed a pen and an inkwell and headed for the Hold. There, she filed the binder away and did what she hoped was her last bit of penmanship before leaving: with bated breath, she approached the lectern, flipped to the last filled in page of the index, and jotted down what she had added to the collection.

She knew she ought to have then gone straight back to the castle after this, to promptly get that laundry done, but she couldn't resist: she had to take a moment to flip through the massive index and maintenance log once again. Writing in this thing hadn't felt so bad – a lot of people of highly varying skill levels had contributed to it over decades of things being added and moved about in the collection. Some had written with a flawless handwriting like Alucard's, some had been just talented enough to scribble a semi-intelligible representation of a particularly important shelf and its renewed layout. One drawing that Sypha loved to bits was a clumsy doodle of a crest of some sort, under which was written: 'That black book with an emblem like this on the cover, I cannot read a single damned word in it.'

Reading through this testament to the Belmont family's hard work was bittersweet - each different handwriting represented a unique person, with likes and dislikes, good days and bad days. Stories about the Belmonts had made them sound like they were all mysterious hardened warriors, but at least when they had written in this book, they had done so as little more than people who had struggled to keep their basement in order.

The bitter part was, of course, that these people were all gone now. Also, seeing them as interesting, hardworking individuals made the loss of them feel ever more tangible to Sypha - they seemed like they would have been fascinating to have a chat with. And really, they had done so much for Wallachia, yet this was all that remained of them? A treasure trove that had very nearly been lost to the ages, a burnt down manor, fading stories of some of their adventures, and one son that haunted the land like a vindictive ghost, unable to pass on. Sypha felt sorry for the Belmonts – even if they'd had some iffy dealings, they had deserved so much better. She wished they could have at least rested in peace, but she had a feeling that their spirits were still roaming among these shelves, wandering in the ruins of their family home, and following in Trevor's shadow, looking on with trepidation as the last bearer of their name meandered through life.

In fact, Sypha swore she could almost sense the Belmonts of the past watching, waiting. Closing the index, walking between bookshelves, running her hand across the spines of the books like Trevor had done in passing, the mage felt a deep connection to history, the guidance of many idle hands who had done this very same thing over the course of centuries. It could have been just her imagination, but she felt like she was thinking what the spirits of the past were thinking: this couldn't be the end of them...

Suddenly, in the midst of these musings, Sypha heard a singular noise coming from far above her. She looked up and at first, she wasn't seeing or hearing anything more but then, after a stretch of silence, she heard faint footsteps. Soon, she saw Alucard's flowing fair hair falling like a curtain as he peered down at her over a railing above.

'Oh dear, princess,' Sypha spoke out before he could. 'It would seem that thy locks are a little short for me to climb.'

The half-vampire gave her a dirty look and let her remark go without comment.

'I showed the beastman the washroom and some clothes he can wear,' he told the magician. 'I figured you could show me those hidden messages while he's bathing.'

Sypha blinked in surprise. 'Oh, right!' she responded. 'I forgot all about them.'

Alucard got down to the bottom layer and so, the magician gave him a tour of the trail of clues that the Belmonts had left to lead people to their secret alchemy projects for... some reason. There were pages in the index where there were seemingly random bolded letters spelling words, there were arrows carved underneath shelves, there were innocent-looking ornate patterns on the floor that, nevertheless, were in the black, white, yellow, and red of the alchemical Magnum Opus and bore alchemical symbols hidden among religious ones.

Much like Sypha, Alucard found these quite entertaining once they were pointed out to him. Even then, though, the dhampir seemed more uneasy than before, somehow, and Sypha couldn't come up with a reason why that would have been. Just as their conversation concerning the Belmonts' alchemy obsession slowed down and Sypha began to pry into what new thing was burdening her friend, he suddenly declared the tour finished.

'I think I'll have to save the rest of this silliness for later,' he said, standing up from his knees after his peek at one of the hidden arrows. 'I'll savour it once I'm alone and bored.'

He looked down at Sypha, who struggled a little more to get up on her feet – she didn't want to say it, but she really needed to go take a leak. Alucard watched her cumbersome ascent with a frown, which she at first thought to be just concern, but upon seeing him open his mouth without quite being able to speak up, she knew it was something else. It took another reluctant try for him to come out with what he had to say.

'I want to ask something of you, but... it might be a somewhat rude thing to stick my nose into at this point,' he told apologetically.

'Oh?' Sypha replied, not having expected that. 'Well, ask away.'

'Alright then... How much has your opinion on Trevor and the end of the legend changed since Greşit?' the dhampir inquired.

Sypha had to stifle a wince – that really was a bit of an uncomfortable thing to dig into. 'W-well,' she stammered, forcing a smile. 'As you have no doubt noticed, I don't find Trevor quite so loathsome anymore,' she admitted. She then looked down. 'As for the end of the Story, well...'

'Well?' Alucard prodded gently.

'Well. I... don't think I want to return to the caravan,' Sypha confessed. Realising, then, that she was giving the wrong idea, she hastily corrected herself, 'For good, I mean! I _am_ going to see my people and pass down the story of what we've done here. I am not going to shirk my duty as a Speaker. But... I can't see myself staying anymore.'

Alucard raised an eyebrow. 'Are you unhappy, living among Speakers?' he asked.

'Oh no, of course not!' Sypha denied. After a brief moment, however, she was already grimacing at herself, knowing full well that she wasn't sounding convincing at all.

'Err...' she continued reluctantly and looked away in embarrassment. 'Um, that's what I always used to tell myself, anyway,' she admitted. 'I've never thought that I have the right to be unhappy. I mean, as a heretic I may be an outlaw, but I have a loving family, I am in good health, and I have never gone hungry for long. My people don't treat me like property because I was born a woman, either. There are so many people out there who have it worse than I do.'

'There's _always_ someone worse off,' Alucard pointed out.

'I know,' Sypha said with a sigh, 'but still, it always felt petty and selfish to complain. I figured that we all have our crosses to bear and if mine is feeling like I'm a little out of place and not making the best use of my abilities, then I'm pretty blessed, you know?'

'Hmm, okay. So... what changed?' Alucard asked.

'Well, we three basically saved humankind, didn't we?' Sypha reminded him. 'I finally got to actually use the full extent of my skill to _stop_ evil. I think giving people relief, healing them and helping them rebuild, is important, but I don't think I can go back to just... going around cleaning up after evil has done its work! It makes me feel so powerless.'

Her friend hemmed, amused. 'So your plan now is to... go out there and fight evil? With Trevor?' he questioned.

'That's the gist of it, yes,' Sypha confirmed. She chuckled and muttered under her breath: 'God knows he doesn't have anything better to do with his time.'

'That's very true,' Alucard agreed. 'If you left it up to him, he'd return to just crawling from tavern to tavern, occasionally stopping to raise his leg at a tree.'

The half-vampire had expected to get a laugh, a huff, something out of his friend but was met with silence. Sypha had just zoned out, staring through her friend with a somewhat wistful if not outright sad half-smile.

Alucard warned her once more: 'I feel like I'm being rude again, but I'm going to ask anyway...'

Sypha, suddenly pulled back out of her daze, shook her head and focused again. 'Hm?'

'Do you think you'll be more than just traveling companions, him and you? Like the legend seems to say that you will.'

The mage was quite taken aback by the directness of the question. ' _Huh,_ ' she said stiffly. She blinked a few times in succession and furrowed her brows as she thought about what her response was going to be.

She decided she was going to lie.

'I... try to avoid thinking about that,' she said sheepishly. 'I feel like if I hope it doesn't happen, it's definitely going to happen. And if I hope it happens, of course it doesn't happen then. So, I'm trying to just keep an open mind. Take things as they come.'

Alucard nodded. 'Entirely reasonable,' he said approvingly. Then he asked: 'What if Trevor doesn't want to go with you, though?'

Sypha's reaction was immediate and it was a short snort. 'Oh, I think he will,' she said wryly.

Alucard chuckled but only briefly, before becoming quite stern. 'Your confidence is admirable, but... I wish you would consider the possibility, no matter how unlikely it may seem,' he said somewhat apologetically. 'Suppose a damaged, mistrustful man like him might at least need a little convincing.'

'Also,' he added, 'if you by any chance _were_ to hope to become more than just traveling companions with him, I suggest thinking about why you have chosen him, of all people. He will almost definitely demand to know that.'

'Oh,' Sypha said, a bit shocked to get this sort of advice from the half-vampire. 'Well, I will have to think about it, then.'

'Good,' Alucard commended.

'Now, it's about time we went back, don't you think? To see how much Belmont is left after you rinse away all the grime.'

Sypha snickered. 'Sure. Let me just put out the candles.'

Once the lights were out, the two made their way to the highest floor and used their respective magical means to get up to the surface. In the castle, Sypha took a detour through the latrines before she went to the washing facilities, where she stripped and chucked her and Trevor's clothes in a water basin to soak. She then had a soak herself, immersing as much of herself in water without getting her wounded shoulder wet – it wasn't often that she could have a hot bath in a basin big enough to fit her entire body in so it would have been criminal not to make the most of it.

Whilst she soaked in water that was _just_ shy of being too hot, Sypha began pondering about Alucard's advice and the lie she had spun. Unlike she had told her friend, she was fairly certain that her becoming her Hunter's lover was pretty much a prerequisite to him sticking around. Trevor wasn't very eager to please people, so he probably needed to get something out of their shared ventures to stay invested. He was a man of simple pleasures, thankfully, and appeared bribeable, but Sypha, as a Speaker, didn't have money or other material possessions worth noting, so all she could give to him was her own darling self.

Upon acknowledging this, Sypha let out an incredulous huff at herself: just a little while ago she had dreaded the fulfillment of the prophecy so much and now, it was a given to her that she was going to embrace it. Arn was definitely going to want to hear the story of how that had come to pass but what on earth was she going to tell him? Trevor had become more of a decent person during this adventure but that wasn't going to be enough of an explanation to her brother. Yet, unfortunately, from her perspective this turnaround had kind of just... happened. Slowly at first and then all at once, like falling asleep.

What had actually occurred, though, was that whilst she had scoured through the Hold for the spell, she had dutifully kept her anxieties out of the way, yet they had been doing their nasty work in the background. She had, during moments of respite, still wondered what she was going to do after her adventure was over – she had already come to the conclusion that staying with her family was going to be temporary at best but the rest had been a mystery. Meanwhile, reading through the Belmonts' literary collection, she had begun to feel a sense of camaraderie with these long dead people, wishing something more had come out of their legacy, at least.

And then there had been the question of what would happen to Trevor. Sypha's growing suspicion had been that on his own, her friend would regress, the thought of which had twisted her guts in frustration. What if she never saw him again after parting ways with him? What if she wouldn't hear of him again, or what if he met a pathetic early end? The fate of whatever happened to her friend would then haunt her till the end of her days. She would feel forever guilty for not having done anything for the one Belmont she could have actually helped. No, she wanted to do something for him – was there really no way for her to make sure he was going to be alright?

Then, suddenly, as if feeling her grandfather's reassuring hand on her shoulder, it had clicked. If she stayed with Trevor, she didn't need to keep living with her family, and she wouldn't have to wonder what happened to him, either. If she stayed with him, she could keep hunting the night horde and by doing so, remind Wallachians of what they had unwisely done away with. The prophecy... it had been pointing her to a simple, effective solution all this time.

Realising his had been both terrific and terrifying at once. With the choices she was drawn to, Sypha could hardly recognise this person she had become, yet this was definitely coming from her. Had her grandfather and the rest of her family seen this in her, long before she had? They had sometimes behaved with such resignation towards her, even Arn. She had thought it to be because she was the youngest of the group and the Elder's granddaughter, but was this what it had actually been? Them ackowledging that as soon as her grandfather wasn't there to nip her tendencies in the bud, she was going to sprawl like a weed?

Sypha pouted and sunk in the water a bit. After all those big words, was Arn just going to roll his eyes and scoff at her and say something like 'I knew it,' when she told him of her choice? Maybe, probably... Perhaps, then, it was more important to think about what she was going to tell her Hunter if he doubted her reasoning, like Alucard seemed to think he was going to. At a bit of a loss, the Speaker looked up and made a long troubled, contemplative noise.

She... couldn't say she was in love with Trevor. Not unless platonic love counted? She did want the best for her friend and she wanted to see him grow, thrive, and be happy. But, despite that, her main reason to pursue him was to further her goals. This must have been a consequence of her looking down at her non-Speaker peers, pitying how most of them wouldn't marry for love - she had thus far been _so_ thankful and proud that she was a Speaker, that she was never going to have to be the partner of someone she wasn't passionate about. Well, too bad for whoever was in charge of doling out ironic, humbling twists of fate, she had no problem casually acknowledging that if she got what she wanted, she would soon be regularly copulating with someone she had no romantic feelings for. Unless Trevor was awful at it, it probably wasn't worse than the sex she'd had thus far, after all.

Sypha shuddered - the less was said about her awkward, embarrassing, ultimately fruitless attempts to find a spark between herself and Speakers from other caravans, the better. Oh how duped it had made her feel, having heard all that talk of how being romanced and having intercourse was so special, particularly when it was all new! Many had consoled her, telling her that if she felt the desire for it, the feeling would surely come to her eventually, but she'd had a hunch that it wasn't a good idea for her to hold her breath. And she wasn't going to hold her breath now, either! She was done waiting, she was going to go and make her own happiness. After all, even if intercourse wasn't terribly exciting to her by itself, who was to say it couldn't be made fun anyway? If she and Trevor could have it with the same casual playfulness as they had their other pleasant interactions, it was probably nice enough, especially if she also got to enjoy other less involved kinds of intimacy during it. Or, if she got Trevor begging for it like a good boy! Now _there_ was an intriguing thought and a half...

Anyway, back to the question at hand. What _was_ she going to tell Trevor if he popped the ”why me” question? Apart from her numerous practical reasons, she wasn't sure. But, why wouldn't those and both participants getting enough out of their relationship be enough? Trevor was pretty pragmatic himself, after all. Well, he liked to think so, anyway. With that in mind, Sypha was going to keep thinking about her answer but also doing what she had been doing thus far: laying groundwork. She had busily been setting precedents, getting used to being physically close to Trevor. By the supposed end of their journey, she was hopefully at a point where it wouldn't look or feel unnatural to ask him to stay with her _._ She had been a little clumsy and obvious at times, she felt, but for someone who had never needed to woo anyone, she thought she had done a pretty good job thus far. Thinking about this, a confident smile spread on her lips - she could do this! As long as she put her heart into it and did her best, she could make it happen!

After letting out a determined huff, the magician finally got up from her bath. She washed her hair, rinsed, and dried herself. She clothed herself with the simple white nightshirt that Alucard had left her to wear, feeling rather unusually and delightully dainty in it. Once she was done admiring herself, she went to the laundry room next door, where she used Dracula's strange machines to wash the clothes. She didn't even get wet again! Although she did share some of Trevor's annoyance at machinery, she could have definitely gotten used to not having to never needing to whack, rinse, or wring wet soapy clothes. In any case, she got around to hanging the clean clothes to dry soon enough and upon leaving the washing facilities, she felt quite accomplished, even though the machines had, indeed, done most of the work.

Where to next? Well, Sypha supposed she needed to have her shoulder bandaged up again and also, she wanted to see what temporary wear Alucard had found for Trevor. There had been many of these white nightshirts in different sizes for guests of the castle, a tidbit Sypha had found a surprisingly humanising about the vampire warlord, so it should have followed that Trevor was wearing one of these as well. Realising this, Sypha looked at the wide and low frilled neckline and the just about knee-length hem on hers and... oh, goodness. This was going to be interesting. Immediately, she went and got herself a roll of bandage so she could begin her search for the Belmont heir.

The first place she tried her luck with was the guest wing. She did find the vampire hunter's weapons and other gear in one of the rooms, but the man himself was nowhere to be seen, sadly. Since her other guesses as to where he might have been were scattered across the castle, she decided to go ask Alucard if he knew anything.

'He said something about getting something for the undead animals,' the dhampir told her when she arrived at the lesser study, where he was working on his drawings. 'That's the last I've heard of him. It was a while ago, though.'

'Huh. I didn't think he would warm up to them this quickly.' Sypha commented. 'Then again, he does seem to get along with animals pretty well.'

'Well, he _is_ one himself, after all,' Alucard said casually and returned his attention to his drawing.

Sypha smiled and shook her head knowingly at him. Since there was nobody there to call her out on acting as if other people's wisdoms were her own, she spoke in a sage-like manner, 'My friend, _none_ of us are unlike animals.'

She then turned around and stepped back towards the door. After a brief pause, she added, 'Least of all you, wolfie.'

While Alucard snorted and rolled his eyes, his Speaker friend made her leave. She headed for the forgemaster's workshop first, seeing that it was the closest of the places she was meaning to check, anyway. Sypha expected him to have long since moved on, though, so when she came to said room and opened the heavy wooden door, she was quite surprised. A little spooked, even, because the first thing she saw was something flying through the air from the left and land on the stone floor to her right with a clatter.

Before she could identify what it was or what was going on, the little undead dog from earlier was scrambling wildly after it, its little claws skittering against the floor as it ran past Sypha, wheezing. It caught the object on the floor in its mouth and was still trying to adjust it to a more easily carried position when it turned around, allowing Sypha to see what it was: it was just a stick. When she looked to her left, she found none other than Trevor sitting on a wooden stool and giving her an inquisitive gander from head to toe.

'Well hello,' Sypha greeted him, not at all bothered that her largely bare legs and the low neckline of the nightshirt had caught his attention. When she ogled back at her friend, though, she suddenly broke out in a short incredulous laugh.

'Ha! What on earth are you wearing?' she asked, amazed, as she walked closer to the vampire hunter.

Trevor, making a face, tore his eyes off of Sypha. He turned his attention back to the little dog, which was trotting towards him with its stick, and he stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the Speaker as she came up to him. She scanned his appearance in awe, unsure what to think, as he wasn't a nightshirt: it was a black and red tunic of some sort but it was way, _way_ too big for him. The shoulder seams drooped off Trevor's shoulders, the long sleeves were rolled so they didn't go past the wrists, and the hem looked like it could have gone past his knees, should he have stood up. With the inclusion of Trevor's usual boots, the whole thing covered most of him quite well compared to Sypha's nightshirt, which was somewhat disappointing but, well, the sight of this big strong man in even bigger clothes was funny enough that it made up for this flaw.

'I needed to go outside and I didn't want to freeze my bollocks off in one of those frilly rags,' Trevor finally grumbled. 'So, Alucard made me choose something from his _dad's_ wardrobe.'

Sypha giggled and snorted. 'It... It looks great!' she lied, a grinning from ear to ear.

Trevor hemmed and leaned down to pry the stick out of the little dog's misshapen mouth. 'Well, joke's on him,' the vampire hunter muttered under his breath, 'since I now know where Dracula's clothes are, I'm going to pilfer one of his capes while his prick of a son's not looking.'

Sypha snorted and came close to admonishing him. Mid-thought, however, she realised something that she found a lot more pressing.

'Wait, did you...' she said quietly, watching Trevor throw the stick for the dog once more. As soon as it was in the air, the little creature bounded after it, its bony front paw tapping against the stone floor as it went. A grin spread on the magician's lips again before she finished her question.

'Did you go outside just to get that stick?' she asked.

Trevor winced and clicked his tongue, still refusing to look at her. 'I was bored, he was bored, and it's not like it's _his_ fault that he's creepy, ugly, and daft,' he defended his choices. 'Also playing fetch with meaty slimy pig bones seemed nasty.'

'Aww,' Sypha said, then snickered. 'The big scary vampire hunter has a little undead friend!'

Just as she said this, the dog arrived with its stick once again, eliciting a noisy exasperated sigh from Trevor. As reluctant as he was, though, he reached down and grabbed the stick. He looked on with a bored expression as the dog snarled and, still biting down on the other end of the stick, thrashed its head back and forth as viciously as it could. Judging by the man's lack of reaction, this wasn't the first time this small animal was engaging in a one-sided tug-of-war. As this was happening, Sypha's attention was drawn to Trevor's injured hand: it was wrapped in fresh bandages. He must have taken care of it himself... That left Sypha with just her own injuries to worry about.

'So, uh,' Sypha suddenly said and held up her roll of bandage for her comrade to see. 'As much as I hate to interrupt you two playing, I need my wounds dressed.'

'Mm. Right,' Trevor mumbled whilst absent-mindedly letting the little dog think it was winning. Then, rather callously, he wrenched the stick away from the undead animal and chucked it across the room one more time. 'Let's get this over with, then,' he said as he dusted his hands and watched the dog scramble after its toy.

The vampire hunter got up from his stool, switching places with Sypha. After handing the bandage roll to him, she proceeded to tug at the neckline of her nightshirt until she could pop her right shoulder out of it - seeing this, Trevor hastily turned away. Sypha rolled her eyes but adjusted the garment to hide her breasts anyway.

'This should do,' she said, just to make sure her friend knew she was ready.

Trevor turned around and stepped behind her, grumbling unhappily. 'You'll have to talk me through this again,' he warned her.

Sypha looked at him over her shoulder, confirming that he was, indeed, looking quite unsure.

'Well, there's an easier way you could try tying this with,' she said. 'Instead of rolling the bandage between my shoulder and my neck,' she went on, pointing her finger at her shoulder and then her neck, 'you could tie the bandage under my opposite pit.' She pointed at her bare shoulder and then her left armpit, hidden under her shirt.

As Sypha looked up at Trevor's face again, she was pleased to see that he seemed on board with this idea... at _first_. Then, as his expression twisted into one of unease, she realised: it was just because he was only now realising the catch.

'You... would have to be entirely topless for that, wouldn't you,' the vampire hunter pointed out in a flat voice.

Sypha tilted her head inquisitively. 'Well... it's not a problem for me if it's not a problem for you,' she said.

Trevor averted his gaze from her and grimaced. 'Let's just not,' he said.

Sypha shrugged and looked ahead. 'Well, if you say so. You did well enough with the previous way, eventually, so I guess it's not a big deal.'

With that, Trevor got to work under Sypha's supervision and guidance, not that the job was actually all that complicated – the silly man was mostly just convinced he was unsuited for delicate tasks such as this. Pretty soon he was wrapping the bandage in a repeating looping pattern without needing to be told what to do.

'See? There you go, you're doing it,' Sypha encouraged him. 'You're not as bad as you think.'

Trevor flinched a little, cringing, before furrowing his brows in determination once again.

'Bah. What do you know,' he grumbled and returned to his task at hand.

Sypha turned her head to give him a look of bemusement. She had been suspecting it, but this finally confirmed it: Trevor was moping. Or, at least he was trying to. Had being made to bathe and wear a stranger's clothes really been that traumatic for him or was it something else? Well whatever it was, it probably wasn't anything serious. He would have been either more ornery or listless if it were something she ought to worry about. Once she had come to this conclusion, Sypha went back to looking ahead and noticed that another undead animal had decided to show up. The cat that had lurked underneath a drawer earlier stood beyond the open door to the adjacent room, looking into the forgemaster's workshop unsurely. Only its front half was visible to Sypha as it deliberated on whether it should get any closer to the strangers in its old master's work space.

'Kitty–!' Sypha blurted out reflexively. Then, as she saw the cat step fully into view, showing that all the skin beyond its ribs was missing, the stunned magician got stuck stretching the last vowel: '– _eeeeh...'_

'A bloody sick joke to bring something like that from the dead, isn't it?' Trevor sneered unhappily.

'Well I'll say!' Sypha responded huffily. She watched in disgust as the cat walked slowly to inspect the dog's stick, which just lay on the floor now. The magician went on, 'I mean, it doesn't look like it's in pain or anything, but still, that _can't_ be comfortable.'

Trevor made a wordless noise in agreement, too lazy or concentrated on his task to make a comment. The cat, meanwhile, quickly lost interest in the stick and went to check on the dog, who was busy gnawing and slobbering all over one of the pig bones that Alucard had provided.

'I wonder what Alucard is going to do with these poor things,' Sypha pondered out loud whilst watching this happen.

'Dunno,' Trevor grunted. 'I'm more worried about the pigs – they're actually still alive, for now. But, Alucard doesn't seem like a very enthusiastic shoveler of pig shit.'

'I'm sure he'll rather give them a painless death than let them be buried in their own filth, or starve if they run out of feed,' Sypha assured him. 'Or, if he finds out how to activate that thing he thinks is a transmission mirror, I guess he might send them to some village somewhere.'

The vampire hunter snorted quietly. 'The thing I would like to see instead,' he said in a low voice, 'is Alucard embracing what he has inherited from his dear dad, becoming a humble, honest pig farmer.'

This immediately made Sypha's eyes light up. 'Oh my god, that would be amazing,' she gushed. 'Can you imagine him rolling into town with a cartful of pigs and haggling a good price for them?'

Trevor chuckled, sounding oh so pleased with himself. Then, as if remembering he wasn't supposed to be happy, he cleared his throat to cut this merriment short. Sypha grinned at this – he wasn't fooling anyone with his fake sulking. He stubbornly kept at it, though, trying to act all aloof. Due to feeling a little mischievous, Sypha busted out her secret weapon: non-backhanded compliments! When she rolled her shoulder, making sure her bandages weren't too tight, she congratulated her friend warmly for a job well done. Much to her delight, this had the effect she had hoped for, as the unexpected flattery made Trevor squirm, and clearly not only due to displeasure.

Once Sypha's injury had been tended to and her appetite for teasing her friend had been satiated, there was just one more thing Sypha wanted to do before leaving: she had to see the fox. She and Trevor found it in the forgemaster's living quarters, where it was laying on its old master's bed, appearing very wary of the strangers that had suddenly barged into its home. Though curious about the creature and the simple yet clearly lived in bedroom, the heroes didn't bother it by snooping around any further. They decided to go pester Alucard instead, drag him down to the kitchen to sup on leftovers – he seemed to have a habit of forgetting to eat unless he was cooking.

Before that, though, Sypha still had a question she would have liked for her friend to answer. As they stepped out into the corridor and Trevor closed the door to the workshop behind them, Sypha gave him a sly look. Having already gotten the brunt of her impish mood, this immediately made the vampire hunter suspicious.

'What?' he questioned.

'You're quite fond of animals, aren't you Trevor?' his Speaker friend asked.

Trevor shrugged his shoulders and began walking down the corridor. 'They're alright, I suppose,' he admitted nonchalantly. 'I feel for the ones that just want to be left alone to do their own thing – I know what that's like...'

Sypha snickered and followed him, quickly catching up with him. 'I find animals pretty agreeable too,' she said. 'Our horses were like part of the family – it felt terrible to part with them in Greşit. But, well, there were so many people desperate to leave the city while we were intending to stay. So, we gave away our caravan in exchange for that house.'

Trevor clicked his tongue. 'Of course you did,' he murmured.

The conversation threatened to die down but with some prodding, Sypha got her friend to talk about animals some more. He spoke somewhat wistfully about his family's cats, hunting dogs, and horses and with that, Sypha had once again made him forget that he was supposed to be moping. This time he forgot it for a good while, too: only when he saw Alucard's face did he start to get uncooperative again. Something had happened between them while she hadn't been looking, Sypha supposed. They proceeded to have a nice supper regardless, after which they did their final chores for the day. Once she was done, Sypha spent some time wandering through the castle, just exploring for a while until her calves started to feel sore from having climbed so many staircases that day. She was pretty tired overall anyway, so she decided to go to bed.

In the guest room that she had claimed for herself, Sypha once again struggled to feel comfortable laying on the wide bed. The mattress was so thick and soft, she kept sinking every time she had found her sweet spot, not to mention that she was alone again. It was just too quiet, too spaceous, too cold without the warm bodies of her family members. The privacy and the lack of layered clothing would have made this an excellent time to rub one off, of course, but she wasn't in the mood. So, the nice room was kind of wasted on her – she would have preferred to stay the night in the Hold again, curled up with a blanket and a good book.

Or with Trevor. In fact, she was tempted to get up and find out what kind of a reaction a plea to share a bed would get her, but... she had a feeling that this would have sent her surprisingly skittish beast running. He hadn't even been comfortable seeing her half-naked yet, after all.

Thinking of the target of her courtship, she pondered about Alucard's warning once again. Was there a reason to fear Trevor might reject her proposal once she had gotten him used to the idea, really? To Sypha, it sure looked like having company, adventuring, and doing something that mattered had brought him alive in a way he hadn't been when she had first met him. In addition to that, having her around was a remarkable convenience: being with her meant being safer, having better food, quite possibly getting some alms from people who sympathised with the Speakers. All that _and_ being able to satisfy his carnal desires with a dashing, brilliant young woman, just for killing some monsters! And doing part of his chores. And drinking a bit less. Why would he say no?

_Well._

Earlier that day, just after having had his private talk with Alucard, Trevor would have been easily able to tell exactly why. No matter what Sypha thought she knew about him, no matter what she thought she was feeling for him, there was no way anything between them was going to work. This wasn't obvious to her only because of some mixture of blind trust in Speaker beliefs, a delusion that she was going to be able to change him, and a big dollop of desperation and insanity brought on by isolation. Sypha was a decent person by nature and he just wasn't – she was going to become frustrated and resentful towards him for his inability to match her expectations and she was going to be worse off for having given him a chance. It was better to part ways as friends.

This all should have remained clear to Trevor, _yet_... the more he had thought about this throughout the day, the more his mind had become muddled. It had begun with a feeling of unfairness and spite, as many of his troubles tended to do. He had fuck-all and barely anyone had cared about him after his family had been taken from him – why couldn't he have just this one thing, just for a while? Sypha was strong and smart and she had her supportive family to take care of her, so surely she would land on her feet and be just fine after things between them went to shit. Would it really have been that bad to let this wreck happen and then run into the night with a few bits and pieces of it as mementos?

Trevor, laying in bed in the dark, recoiled at himself having these thoughts, again. He actually _cared_ about Sypha, also he wanted to go on with his life knowing that somewhere out there, a genuinely good person remembered him and thought of him at least somewhat fondly. If nothing else, he wanted to have the illusion that it was possible to meet her somewhere once again and swap stories, reminisce about that time when they had saved Wallachia, and wonder if Alucard was still in his castle. That would have been such a nice thing to warm his heart with on dark cold nights, wouldn't it?

It was unfortunate, then, that passionately fornicating with her would have just been so much nicer in the short term. Fuck, he just couldn't get around it: strong, cocky women who knew what they wanted just immediately sent his mind to the gutter. Sypha's seeming bookishness had been a turnoff to him at first but damn it, she'd just _had_ to turn out to be fun, too. _And_ she was cute, both in a mischievous, devilish way and in that even more dangerous, excitingly forbidden way that coddled, sweet maidens from honourable families tended to be. It was so hard to not be at least a little flattered by receiving attention from someone like that, even if it came from a place of delusion and ignorance – _why did he have to say no to that?_

The Belmont heir, realising his thoughts had a familiar edge of desperation, let out a frustrated sigh. He was just being a randy bastard again, wasn't he? He'd already had a wank when he had washed himself, but... well, all living things did become more vigorous in spring. It certainly wasn't going to hurt to make sure he had his sanity in full before thinking about important decisions. And so, with an air of annoyance and resignation, he pushed himself up from the mattress. Figuring he wanted there to be as little evidence as possible that he had gotten himself off in a vampire's bed with as little effort as possible, he sat on the edge of the bed, looked around for something to catch his emission with, then thought eh, fuck it, let's play catch. He just pulled back the hem of his oversized tunic and got to work.

Unsurprisingly to him, the first thing that came to Trevor's mind while stroking his cock was Sypha's neck. His fixation on it had been a bit mysterious at first, but it was a thing now: his friend's unusually elegant neck and shoulder area, delightfully shown off by her short hair, was hot to him. He could so easily imagine himself quite innocently removing her bandages, as if just to replace them, only to lean down suddenly, like a disgusting vampire taking a drink from a helpless victim. Oh, the thought did such awful, terrible things to him.

And what of those delicate tits that Sypha had offered to give him a gander of? Perhaps just when she would have recovered from the shock of his mouth on her, he would reach around her to give them a squeeze, shocking her anew. His imagination went on its merry way from there, up until it came up with the visage of Sypha's head in his lap, her pink pillowy lips around his shaft. That did it for him in the end, and as Trevor drew the poison out, he welcomed the return to that sweet sobriety he had known earlier that day.

… Except it never came. He was none the wiser for spilling his seed: he was just a fool sitting on a vampire's bed, feeling empty and useless while holding a handful of his own semen. He had wanted to have the hindsight to cynically scoff at his sentimental self from moments ago but instead, he merely observed himself from the outside, from somewhere far away.

He wondered once again: what the hell was he going to do with himself once all of this was over? Having nobody to watch his back, he was going to have to go back to starting his days by making sure he had all his belongings and limbs with him. He was also going back to having no destination other than the mysterious ”away,” which he could never actually reach. And when he died on his way there, nobody cared what happened to his carcass, not unless it was on someone's doorstep. Though he ought to have gotten used to all this, the thought of it felt so fucking sad and pathetic now, without anything to distract his mind from the truth.

Also, taking a frank look at his recent mistakes, didn't it seem like he could have been underestimating Sypha again? Rationally speaking, what was his reasoning to believe that should they get together, catastrophy would inevitably follow? That they wouldn't be able to split up in reasonably amicable terms? Sypha didn't like to bear grudges, after all. Perhaps he could look forward to meeting her again instead, maybe they would even be able to joke about their joint misadventures.

And what about Alucard's strange plea? It didn't take a genius to figure out that the half-vampire saw some of his supposedly smart and strong-willed doctor mother in Sypha - would he have asked anyone to do anything he thought was going to end up hurting the magician? Lastly, those simple words of encouragement from Sypha, stripped of their proper context, returned to haunt the vampire hunter: 'You're not as bad as you think.'

Wouldn't it have been interesting to put her claim to the test?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trevor: Am I so out of touch?
> 
> Trevor: ...
> 
> Trevor: No, it's the post-nut clarity who is wrong.


	6. The Talk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI, the Solomonărie aka the Scholomance is a place that was mentioned exactly twice in Bram Stoker's Dracula as a place where Count Dracula studied – it's Hogwarts but underground and run by Satan, basically? Supposedly. And by the way: if you want to make Dracula (English version) like 60% more cursed, read all of Van Helsing's lines in the voice of Petra from FE:TH. 
> 
> 'The milk that is spilt cries not out afterwards, as you say.'

Despite her trouble falling asleep the night before, Sypha woke up to the new day well rested. Once she had stretched and yawned, she looked around the windowless room with the help of a ball of light hovering over her palm, wondering what she ought to do. It came to her after a minute: she should first check if it was truly morning and after that... maybe go check if her and Trevor's clothes were dry yet.

A quick trip to a room with a window revealed that the sun was, in fact, up. With that, established, the magician went downstairs to the washing facilities and since she was in the right neighbourhood, she had herself a refreshing morning wash before taking the now dry clothes down and putting hers on. Upon smoothing out the front of her black skirt, she let out an appreciative sigh: she hadn't felt this clean in a long time!

Since she didn't mind spreading this joy around, she folded Trevor's clothes, tucked them and a towel under her arm, and headed back upstairs with a small basin of water in her hands. Her selflessness was hardly appreciated on the spot by her sleepy friend, but he got up anyway. While the grumbling mess of a man to washed up and dressed himself, then, Sypha went downstairs yet again, this time heading for the kitchen. Alucard was already there, looking a little more energetic than he had been the day before, and so the two exchanged greetings and expressed words of incredulity about how it was going to be just one more day before Sypha and Trevor left for Lacul Vulturilor.

'Are you sure you don't want to try to get the Belmonts' distance mirror working?' Alucard asked unexpectedly when he sat down by the dining table with a cup of hot herbal drink. 'We might still get just enough out of that thing to see ihow your family is doing.'

Sypha cringed – her fighting with the castle through the Belmonts' magical mirror had made it even more cracked.

'No... I'm not worried about them anymore,' Sypha responded while tearing a bite-size piece of stale unleavened bread with her fingers. 'My grandfather knows the land like the back of his hand. Also, while he doesn't wield much magic that is useful in battle, he has some tricks up his sleeve that help with avoiding confrontations.'

Alucard raised an eyebrow at her. 'Hmm, come to think of it... who, if not your grandfather, has taught you elemental magic?' he asked.

'I have been instructed by various practitioners we have met during our travels,' Sypha replied. 'I was even taught by a real solomonar at one point!'

'A solomonar, huh?' Alucard said, impressed an amused. 'Not at the Solomonărie though, I presume?'

'Oh heavens no,' Sypha chuckled. 'Not even Speakers are allowed in there, not in a million years.'

A slight smirk played on Alucard's lips. 'My father is the reason why it became such a closely guarded secret centuries ago, you know,' he revealed, just a little smugly.

'No way!' Sypha exclaimed in disbelief. 'Was he the one who raided their secret library? Tell me everything!'

The dhampir told Sypha a rather incredible story about how Dracula had managed to get himself accepted into the legendary underground school of the solomonari, only to leave with a host of sacred texts full of forbidden knowledge. This made Sypha wonder how many of the villains in the innumerable stories of strife and calamity passed on by her people were actually just Dracula from the days before he was known as the king of vampires.

Two more stories of Alucard's father's exploits later, Trevor finally showed up.

'Well look who woke up early,' the half-vampire scoffed at the sight of him.

The vampire hunter responded with a scoff of his own as he stepped in through the door.

'I was feeding our horses and _your_ hogs Alucard,' he retorted. 'Your little hog farm here is never going to get off the ground unless you learn the basics, like the fact that livestock should eat breakfast before masters do.'

Sypha stifled a giggle whilst the dhampir shrugged, unbothered.

'Maybe I should just sell the pigs to you since you seem to like their company so much. You could settle down with a nice sow to continue the Belmont bloodline with,' he sneered.

Trevor stopped near the end of the table and gave him a look of disgust.

'Well now that you've said that, I can only wonder: is it really just the blood of these things what you vampire bastards keep them for?' he asked mockingly.

Sypha let out an incredulous snort and gave her friends a questioning look.

'And so you two are, somehow, once again talking about having sexual relations with animals,' she pointed out. 'Would you mind explaining to me why you keep coming back to this subject?'

'Ask him, he started it,' Trevor immediately hemmed and nodded at Alucard, then walked around the table in the back of the kitchen, where there were still a few unleavened breads left in a basket covered by a piece of cloth.

'I actually didn't, but whatever,' Alucard said nonchalantly.

Sypha shook her head at the men, then had herself a nice stretch. 'Mmmh I'm going to have to make more bread today, don't I,' she said with a groan. 'Enough to last both us and our generous host a couple of days.'

Alucard chuckled softly. 'You don't have to,' he assured the magician.

'Oh but I will,' Sypha assured back.

And so it was decided. After the three had discussed how their share of pork for that day was going to be made into, the preparations for the next journey of the Scholar and the Hunter began in earnest. The two checked the wagon and the horses, did maintenance on their tack, measured enough feed to keep the horses fed on the road, et cetera. When the sun climbed high enough that it was time Sypha started making bread, she left her traveling partner to take the geldings out to graze. In the kitchen, she met up with Alucard and the two started cooking.

Like that, the three had another fairly pleasant, uneventful time doing chores most of the day. But, although the broad strokes were much the same as they had been on the four days that had led to it, the mood was completely different. Sypha was more cheerful and vigour, Alucard was even more pensive and distant than usual, while the vampire hunter, too, was rather solemn. The latter's way of reacting to leaving stuck out to Sypha – he had been so eager to leave until now, after all. But just as she pondered upon this, the obvious hit her: he was leaving his childhood home behind again, of course he was a little lost in his thoughts. She figured it was best that she didn't intervene in this process too much so she left him be.

That was until she thought of what seemed like a great and thoughtful idea for something that could have killed two birds in one stone. How about they took the horses on a longer walk around the estate? It would prepare the animals for the more arduous excercise they were going to have the next day, but secretly, it would have also doubled as a sort of farewell tour if his family's old lands. It seemed perfect - she would ask the vampire hunter about it over their next meal.

Much to her pleasure, Trevor agreed to this, though probably thanks to Sypha not voicing the latter part of her reasoning for the walk. After their usual kitchen chores were done with, they put the horses in leads and got going, walking briskly across the grassy hills as the late afternoon sun shone weakening rays of light down on them. They went around the ruins of the Belmont manor, through the surrounding woods, to the road leading out of the area. Thanks to the unseasonably warm weather, it barely looked like the same road they had come to the Belmont lands on: trees and bushes had leafed out in a hurry and understory plants were pushing new growth, even making decent progress in colonising the compacted dirt of the old unkempt road.

But then, there was Trevor's tree, bleak as ever with its rotten, hollowed out core and dry lifeless branches. Or so Sypha thought, at least, until she walked under its bare crown: when she looked closely, some of the lower branches had swollen buds that had only just gotten a bit green.

'Oh hey, it's still alive,' the mage said, surprised. 'Just a bit late compared to its neighbours.'

Trevor hummed wistfully. 'It's been like this as long a s I remember,' he droned and stepped closer to the gnarled and craggy old-timer. 'Every year you think it's finally done but then it wakes up. Tough old bugger.'

Sypha smiled. This kind of contemplative, almost serene Trevor was a bit of an anomaly, but it was nice to see nevertheless. Wondering what else there was to see apart from this one tree, she looked around her with her hands on her hips. To her annoyance, her half of the pair of geldings then lowered its muzzle to nibble at the hood of her robe, which she repelled with a hiss and a threatening gesture that made the animal take a step back. This sort of behaviour was best nipped in the bud, before she had a pushy and bitey horse in her hands.

'Where to next?' she asked her friend as soon as she had gotten the horse out of her hair.

'Back to the castle?' Trevor suggested as he stepped away from his tree. Having seen what had just occurred between the Speaker and the horse, he seemed mildly entertained.

'Already?' Sypha responded disappointedly as she turned to him. 'I think these fellows could use some more exercise still.' Side-eyeing the mouthy gelding she had beside her, seeming once again tempted to bother her, she muttered: ' _Clearly_ they've still got a good amount of excess vim.'

Trevor made a contemplative noise and turned around, looking west, past his tree.

'Well... the game trail continues a skip and a hop away in that direction,' he said. 'It branches off back towards where the castle is, I think.'

'Let's go then,' Sypha urged cheerfully. 'Lead the way?'

The vampire hunter shrugged and started walking through the woods again. His gelding did as well, followed by Sypha and her escortee right behind them.

'I thought _I_ was glad to finally leave but it's nothing compared to you, is it,' Trevor suddenly said without looking at his friend.

'Well, we will get to be bearers of good news when we roll into the next town,' Sypha pointed out as she snapped a thin lichen-covered twig off a withered tree she was passing. 'I'll get to tell people we killed Dracula!'

Trevor let out a sharp breath through his nose in amusement. 'So you're excited about being able to brag?'

'Yes,' Sypha replied shamelessly as she snapped her twig with one hand and absent-mindedly tossed it away. 'It's nice, having done something you can be openly proud about, isn't it? Something big and important you can point to when people act like you're bad news.'

'Ha. Can't say it's not,' Trevor agreed.

'I knew you'd get it,' Sypha said with a snicker. 'You're not like most Christian men.'

'What's that supposed to mean?' said Christian-raised man questioned suspiciously, finally looking at Sypha over his shoulder.

'We- _hell_ ,' Sypha chuckled, 'in my experience, most of your ilk take it very personally when a woman has the gall to express pride in any achievement beyond her husband and children and her devotion to God.'

Under her breath, she added, 'Not that Speakers are that tolerant of displaying a lack of humility, either.'

'Oh,' Trevor responded, his tone hard to pin down. A little uneasy, certainly.

'But Belmonts on the whole weren't like that, were they?' Sypha questioned. 'Against women leading non-domestic lives, that is. At least some of the records I read in the Hold referred to women of your family being employed as monster hunters.'

'Mm, yeah,' Trevor replied. 'A Belmont's a Belmont... that's what I was always told. And my family didn't trust outside help much, so anything they wanted to get done they would rather have another Belmont doing for them, be it man or woman. We were always at least a little short-staffed and short on funds, so I guess that's part of the reason why daughters were so welcome to stay instead of taking their dowries and moving away.'

'Oh. Interesting,' Sypha commented.

The two and their horses pushed through the undergrowth, with Trevor telling about his family's means of keeping a good standing among the big old houses, until they reached the game trail. The vampire hunter seemed a bit unsure about where he was going till they came to a spot where the trail forked.

'Ah... That one goes back towards the fields, I think,' he said and pointed to his right, downhill. Then he nodded at the one going left, uphill. 'If you want to see a pretty great view of the river we could take a detour up to the cliffs over there.'

'Yes please!' Sypha replied enthusiastically.

With that, they escorted the horses up the trail and when they reached the highest point, they came to an open area, a beautiful green meadow.

'Huh,' Sypha said, surprised, as she scanned her surroundings. 'Is it just me or is the greenery even further ahead here than below?' she asked, looking down at the dainty white flowers poking up from between tufts of lush grass.

'It's the southern exposure I guess,' Trevor said while he detached his gelding's lead from its halter. 'Pretty decent place for these two to have a snack at while we go take a look at those cliffs, I reckon.'

Sypha released her horse as well, then handed the lead to her friend, who was gesturing at her to hand it over. She snorted at him when he just hung, nearly threw them, haphazardly on the nearest tree branch that was low enough for him to reach. After this, they followed the trail across the meadow, where the trail continued towards the lowering evening sun. Finally walking right beside him instead of a horse's length away on a narrow trail, Sypha studied her quiet friend's habit curiously, trying to see if he was any worse for the wear after talking about his family a bunch. The look in his eyes was distant and he wore no discernible expression as he stared ahead, trudging forward at a rather slow, steady pace.

'Sooo... You've been pretty quiet all day,' the Speaker commented.

Trevor gave her a questioning look. 'Oh. Have I?' he asked.

Sypha narrowed her eyes a little – it was hard to tell whether he had asked that earnestly or sarcastically.

'Yes,' she said after giving him him the benefit of the doubt. 'Anything in particular on your mind? If you would like to share, that is.'

The Belmont heir looked ahead again and shrugged somewhat twitchily.

'I've been thinking about, you know... _things_ ,' he uttered reluctantly. 'Like... the future.'

'Ohh. The future, huh?' Sypha responded, feigning a patient, polite sort of interest rather than showing she was thoroughly intrigued. 'What about it?'

Trevor's face twisted for a moment into something between a cringe and grin before mellowing down into a faint, mirthless smirk.

'Well, I have a bit of a problem with the future, which is that I don't know what to do with it,' he admitted without looking in her direction. 'I don't like any of the options I've come up with,' he admitted.

' _Oh_ ,' Sypha responded, just barely hiding how delighted she was to hear this.

She was about to ask what kinds of options he had been thinking of, but Trevor spoke up first.

'Must be nice... Knowing exactly what you're going to do,' he said in a lower voice.

Was that a hint of bitterness she heard in his voice? Whatever it was, it made Sypha cock her eyebrow and wonder how she ought to respond. Then, realising suddenly that this was a very temptingly approppriate-feeling moment to talk about what she was hoping to do with him, her heart started beating faster and her cheeks began to feel a bit hot. It was so, so early for that though! She had been preparing to ask him about it when they reached her caravan, not before...

'I... _don't_ know what I'm going to do, not exactly at least,' she stuttered.

Discreetly, she took a deep breath to calm herself down. She was going to at least hint towards what she wanted, plant the idea of it in his head. She absolutely had to be smooth and casual about it!

'In fact, I'm not sure about it at all,' she said much more nonchalantly, then paused. She looked down with a somewhat distant, fairly stern look on her face, thinking carefully about how she was going to proceed.

'I want to rejoin my caravan,' she went on. 'This is a story that should be read into our memory stores...'

Yes, yes, she was sounding very natural.

'...But after that?' she said innocently, looking to the side. 'I don't know.'

'You'll travel with them, surely,' Trevor said. 'Go back to your old life.'

Sypha furrowed her brows again and came to a stop, letting her friend get ahead of her. Should she just... go for it, after all?

'I don't know,' she said quietly.

Her heart was starting to race again, and her throughts were too. Meanwhile, Trevor stopped walking as well and turned around to face her.

'Since I met you,' the Speaker spoke with a widening smile and looked back at him, 'I've come back from a living death.'

She averted her gaze for a moment as she listed: 'I've fought demons in the city square at Greşit. I've stopped a raiding force from reaching Argeş. I've discovered forgotten spells in the greatest hidden library in Europe.'

Having gotten more excited than she had been meaning to, she had begun to gesticulate with her hands. Somewhere in the back of her head, she was aware she could be headed into trouble, but instead of slowing down, she just went on.

' _And_ I've trapped a castle that uses magic engins to move from place to place,' she said while she made a gesture of holding something in place and struggling with it. 'And pinned it to the ruins of the Belmont home!'

She looked up from the imaginary miniature of Dracula's castle, meeting Trevor's gaze with glee.

'Why would I want to stop now?' she asked him.

The man appeared a little apprehensive, making Sypha fear for a moment that she was indeed severely rushing things. Much to her surprise, however, he urged her to keep going.

'Go on,' he said, not exactly intrigued but not turned off, either, and spun slowly on his heels to face forward again, then resumed walking towards the cliffs ahead.

'Look,' Sypha spoke as she took a few hurried steps to catch up. Now that she had gotten in this deep, she had to make her case and do it well! 'We know at least some of Dracula's army landed at Brăila,' she said before asking: 'Are the night hordes going to go home?'

'Well, no, but–' Trevor responded calmly, only to be cut off.

'And what about the church?' Sypha went on in a bit of a hurry. 'We've both seen how corrupt and twisted it is, and who knows what else is happening out there. What then?'

'Well,' Trevor spoke, looking down at her with a slight smirk, 'what then?'

'Then, we're not finished, are we?' Sypha said, smiling. 'And I don't want to stop.'

The vampire hunter rolled his eyes. 'Stop what, for God's sake?' he asked, annoyed.

Sypha slowed down and let him get ahead of her again, giving his back a look of dismay. What was _that_ all of a sudden? She had been doing so well!

'This! What we're doing!' she exclaimed, exasperated. Then she blurted out: 'And it's good for you too.'

Suddenly, upon glancing around her, she realised: they had reached the cliffs. The sparse woods gave way to a few paces of just grass-covered ground before it abruptly ended. A beautiful river valley bathed in golden evening light waited below, asking to be marveled at, but unfortunately, Sypha had more pressing things to focus on as she hurried to Trevor's side again.

'Okay...' the man drawled unsurely, still walking towards the edge of the cliff. When he finally stopped, he asked: 'How on earth did you come to that decision?'

'When I met you,' Sypha began, then made sure he was paying attention by balling her hand into a fist and bumping it against his chest. '– you reeked of piss, blood, and stale beer. You killed a monster largely by accident.'

'Hey,' Trevor interjected, 'that took serious skills.'

Without stopping to make any sort of acknowledgment of that, Sypha went on with an incredulous tone: 'Then demanded alcohol before storming off like a toddler with a thistle up his back.'

'Right, how does that even–?'

The magician shushed him down before continuing, 'And now, in the short time we have known each other, you have rediscovered yourself, and you've grown. Today might be the first time I felt like I was talking to an adult man.'

At this point, the vampire hunter was starting to look discouraged. Her tone ought to get congratulatory sooner rather than later, Sypha reckoned.

'You're better than you were when we met,' she reiterated herself a bit more nicely. 'Do you know why I think that is?'

Trevor, looking away from her with a somewhat dejected expression, just shrugged.

'It's because you're doing what you were born for,' the Speaker told her friend and placed her hand on his chest as reassurance. 'As insane as it sounds,' she went on, 'this entire nightmare scenario has made you complete.'

Okay. Here it was. The most important part of all this. Sypha's stomach was tying itself into knots but she couldn't let it stop her.

'I think you should see it through,' she finally said frankly. 'With me.'

'With you,' Trevor repeated, knitting his brows, and turned his attention back to her.

Made giddy by him looking at her, Sypha gazed ahead over the valley to avoid staring right into his eyes and blathered: 'Yes! You could be my handsome sidekick. Or mascot. Imagine that.'

While Trevor's face fell, she went on, wholly oblivious, 'If you didn't talk much, people would think you were my deformed pet bear and throw you free food.'

Unable to believe what he was hearing, Trevor hesitated a moment in silence, almost rubbing his temples with his fingers until he suddenly gave up on it, shaking his head instead. Whilst Sypha gave him a quizzical look, he let out a short quiet sigh and said, 'Sypha.'

'Yes, Trevor?' the magician responded.

The vampire hunter crouched to sit down on the ground.

'You're asking me to roam the countryside and get into horrible trouble,' he said in an unenthusiastic tone once he had settled down, 'because you think it's _good_ for me?'

Sypha knelt down next to him, smiling a little sadly. She had called it, hadn't she? He wasn't going to do this for something as unexciting as self-improvement. He needed to get something more concrete and enjoyable for his troubles. So, the next part was probably the most crucial one: if he wasn't impressed by what he was about to hear, she was so, so very screwed.

'Listen to what I'm really saying, Trevor,' she told her friend as she placed her hand on his forearm. She couldn't keep a slight nervous waver from infiltrating her voice as she continued, 'I'm saying I want you to be with me, and I want you to have adventures with me.'

Trevor knitted his brows as he stared into the middle distance, thinking. Sypha was expecting a long, awkward pause, which was why, for just a fraction of a second, her stomach was in freefall as he suddenly opened his mouth after what felt like a worryingly short time.

'This is the closest thing I've had to a life in... I don't know when,' he said quietly, then turned his head to look at her. 'And you're the closest I've had to a friend.'

Sypha blinked, doing her best to recover from her sudden fright. She could only hope she wasn't coming across as stilted and weird as she held out her palm for her friend and asked him, in a voice that very nearly broke mid-sentence, 'So, will you come with me?'

She gazed at her prophesised partner in hopeful silence, waiting for his answer. This was it, she realised, becoming strangely calm: she had actually popped the question... Whether she had done well or not, she had done her very best and now it was all up to Trevor. The magician stared up into his surprised blue eyes and smiled at him faintly, her soul hovering somewhere outside her body as she waited for his answer. In response, the Belmont heir stared at her in disbelief for a moment, completely silent. But then, his intentions were betrayed by a small wistfully endeared hum and a smile.

'I wouldn't know where else to go,' he said softly as he gave the magician his injured right hand. 'Or who else to be with.'

Sypha glanced down at his hand on her hand. Then she looked back up at his face and floating somewhere in the aether, her soul realised: oh god. He had just said... yes? _Yes_. He had said _yes._ Sypha smiled and then, as relief washed over her, she quite stiffly linked her arm with Trevor's and leaned against his shoulder.

'Good,' she said and closed her eyes, in awe of the fact that she was pressing herself against her _partner_. Oh dear lord, he had actually said _yes_ , she didn't have to worry about convincing him anymore! She had done a great job, everything had gone even better than she had dared to expect! At the height of her elation, though, Trevor interrupted her internal celebrations.

'Where to first?' he asked with a smile.

This caught Sypha by surprise. She answered without really even thinking.

'After we find my people? I think we should see Brǎila,' she said. Then, realising she had already forgotten the exact wording of the question and that he might have also been meaning what to do at the very moment, she added a little sheepishly, 'But let's just stay here just a little longer.'

They enjoyed the beautiful view quietly for a while. Sypha wasn't sure if she had ever been as content as she was in this moment, so handsomely rewarded - it really did pay to believe in oneself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Netflixvania only got more confusing to me in terms of time and seasons the more I tried to figure them out. People are going around in short-sleeved shirts and sandals but there's snow, the trees are bare, and everything looks desolate and cold when the trio drives to the Belmont Hold so that's easy: winter. When Sypha and Trevor have their talk, trees have leaves again and everything looks more lush all around, even more so when Alucard's outside in S3 so we're going from winter to spring right? But then there' apples in a fully leafed out tree in Lindenfeld while there's snow on the ground, it was raining when the Visitor arrived, Alucard picks some sort of berries, a lot of the flowers look like they've been blooming for a while, people are selling what looks like different kinds of fresh produce... is it the end of the year? Looking back, leaves did look pretty yellow and they were falling when Sypha and Trevor leave the castle too, but then again, that could have been the lighting and the fact that leaves, petals, and feathers are always set on perma-shed in animations. 
> 
> In the end I went with spring, a very unusual spring, but, ugh, fuck if I know.
> 
> Also, is it like just a few days between the trio leaving Greșit and killing Dracula, or, somehow, a whole month? The time feels short but not only does the season seem to change pre-Hold and post-Hold, the horses look like walking skeletons when they leave Greșit, a bit less bad later on, and pretty much normal by the last episode of S2. And S3 seems to want to be very clear that even though Sypha and Trevor look and talk like they've been on a long epic journey, it's only been one month since they've left, but then Trevor says he's been traveling with Sypha for... a couple of months. Are you shit at keeping track of time, Trevor, or was there a month between leaving Greșit and killing Dracula? FUCK
> 
> I'm going to be so irate if the beginning of S4 is going to be like lol you thought we've got better times ahead of us in *any* shape or form until the very end? CHOO CHOO, GET ON THE LONG ARSE WINTER TRAIN, IT'S ONLY GOING TO GET COLDER AND DARKER FROM HERE


	7. Country Roads

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Batty wolfy fart cloud boi will no longer be appearing in person from this point on, I'm afraid.

Though thoroughly prepared for, Trevor's and Sypha's departure from Dracula's castle felt sudden. The pair and their host all gave their heartfelt goodbyes outside the Belmont manor ruins, each in their own way. Alucard stood back and watched for a moment as his friends drove off, towards new adventures, but didn't linger on the sight of them leaving. Alone, apart from the company of a few insignificant animals, and having carried out both his mother's will and his role in the Story, the Soldier could finally allow himself to begin mourning his parents in earnest.

Meanwhile, the Hunter and the Scholar and their horses started their journey in good spirits, again each in their own way. The geldings seemed placated by the return to doing something that was familiar to them while Sypha swung between excitedly chattering about the future and contently leaning against Trevor's side while he drove the wagon. As this went on, he, well... he was mostly snickering and grinning, completely in awe at the audacity of this woman hanging onto his arm. Really, he was amazed – if that day when they met again on the road ever happened, he was going to tease her mercilessly about all this.

'Do you remember how you asked me to come with you?' he would ask. 'You likened me to a bloody deformed pet bear, didn't you. And when I asked you if that was what I had to look forward to in life? ” _Yes, forever_ ,” you told me. That didn't quite pan out, now did it?'

Indeed, he was hardly as won over as he was letting Sypha think. After much anguished deliberation, he had come to the conclusion that in order to get himself to swallow his bitter pill, he needed to let himself feel the sickness a little. During this week or so they were going to spend getting to her caravan, he was going to play along, play dumb, go with Sypha's crazy schemes. And just to be fair, he was giving her a chance, nominally: if she did _everything_ right, if she was nothing but fair and reasonable and transparent, not to mention fully able to handle living with him, he would _consider_ actually taking her with him. If, or rather _when_ , that didn't happen he would just leave her with her family like he had always meant to.

Doing things right included being forthright about the Speaker legend saying they're destined to be together or whatever, of course. Trevor wasn't going to ask Sypha about it, either, she had to come out with it herself. And if she didn't, if it took him milking the information out of her to get it, he was gone, like the wind. He absolutely did not appreciate that she and Alucard had kept something this important from him, like they had been conspiring together to trap him. He was _not_ easy prey.

Full of resolve, the vampire hunter once again looked down to his side, at his charming little pain in the neck. The mage was happily leaning against him with her eyes closed, looking as content as a cat, dozing off in a warm lap after having successfully rubbed its fur everywhere. Little did she know, he could have even callously moved and distracted her from her silly little daydreaming. He wasn't going to, not right at the moment, but he could have.

Instead of doing that, Trevor looked around him, watching the once so familiar landscape scroll by. It had been a long time, with a lot more tree having popped up to cover the area, but concentrating on it, he could still intuit where he was on his mental map of yesteryear. He and his traveling partner were soon going to be at the village that his family had watched over – they had gone through it once, on the way to the Belmont estate, but it had been at night and in a hurry, so this was going to be their first good look at it.

When the wagon rolled on top of a gently sloping hill, he saw the first glimpses of it. Just like he and his comrades had seen before, the place was in complete shambles. There was not a single house in sight that still had its thatched roof intact: they had all been burned or smashed or sliced into pieces. No smoke anywhere, no people out in their yards to survey the damage or fix the houses, no signs of life apart from unshepherded livestock roaming about. The chance of there being some stragglers left had seemed minuscule last time and it didn't seem any bigger at the moment.

'Wow. This place looks even worse now, somehow,' Sypha commented.

Destruction was everywhere around the two when they rolled into the village down the central road. Carcasses of livestock caught in the mayhem were scattered among other clutter on both sides of the road. While the bodies of their masters were few and far between, they were there, many ripped apart or charred so thoroughly they were hard to identify at a glance. Thanks to the warmer weather, flies and their brood were busy at work, making them even harder to identify until their feeding frenzy exposed the unmistakable skeletons.

'Yeah,' Trevor agreed in a soft voice, scanning the hopeless sight with a blank expression. Then, having a bleak but somewhat humorous thought, he let out a joyless snicker.

'Well, thanks to rotten luck, the monsters might not have had a whole lot of innocent lives to ruin here,' he said dryly. 'Back in the day, there were quite a lot of people of the old wisdom in the community. The clergy persecuted everyone here for heresy so... the ones who stayed here were probably mostly bastards who told the clergy what they wanted to hear about their neighbours, and us. In other words, the men of God beat the monsters to the punch by quite a bit...'

Upon reaching the centre of the village, the two got down from the wagon and detached the horses from their harnesses. They tried to water the animals at the well in the centre of the village, only to find the task surprisingly difficult: the bucket just didn't seem to get down into the water. To see what the problem was, Sypha sent a slow ball of light down to illuminate it and revealed something that surprised the hunters but was hardly a big shock: at the bottom of the well, the water bucket lay on its side on top of two corpses. Bloated, they completely crowded the waterline.

'Huh,' the mage said, blinking a couple of times as she stared at them. Just as her voice and its echoes in the well died, so did the little flare, leaving the depths dark again.

'They must have thought this was the only place where they could hide from the monsters,' Trevor said indifferently.

'Guess I'll just have to draw water out of the air, then,' the Speaker commented as she pulled the bucket back up from the well.

Trevor watched curiously as she unhooked the empty wooden bucket from the rope it was attached to and turned around to face the horses to place the bucket in front of them. She made a magical hand signal and, with a flash of pale blue light coming out of her fingertips, it was filled with ice, and with another hand signal, the ice became water.

'There you go friends... take turns,' she told the geldings as she took a step back from the bucket to give room.

Trevor let out an amused huff – dead bodies no longer had anything on her, did they?

'While you're busy doing that,' he told the Speaker, 'I'm going to go see if there's anything useful in these houses.'

Sypha immediately swiveled her head to glare at him.

'The first thing you're going to do is _loot_ this place?' she questioned, disgusted.

Unflappable with dead bodies... not so much with anything resembling stealing, apparently.

'Yes,' Trevor responded plainly. 'Dead people don't need things, we do.'

After a brief pause, he added: 'Also, if it makes you feel any better, I fully expect these remaining households to have had some pretty _interesting_ items,' he said dryly. 'Quite a few random things that just happen to have the Belmont crest on them, if you catch my drift.'

The two stared at each other in silence for a moment while the horses jostled for a chance to drink from the single water bucket. Finally, after an unsuccessful attempt to glare holes into Trevor, Sypha relented.

' _Fine_...' she groaned, deflating. 'If you're going to just go and do that, anyway, mind keeping an eye out for a pan or anything else I could fry flatbread with?' she asked. 'It would be nice to be able to make bread on the road without having to use hot stones for it.'

'Will do,' the vampire hunter replied, then spun around on his heels.

With that, Trevor went around the town from wreckage to wreckage, snooping around for anything worth scavenging. He returned to the village centre about an hour later with a haul that he regarded as pretty disappointing but figured might cheer Sypha up.

'Oh, don't mope,' he told the Speaker, who was shooting daggers down at him from the driver's seat of the wagon as he approached her. 'I've got you your pan, a pot too,' Trevor said while holding up a weathered but perfectly usable copper pan for her to see.

'Great,' Sypha said unenthusiastically, leaning into her hand. 'How about we leave now?'

Trevor tucked the pan under his arm and raised an index finger to signal he wasn't done yet. He reached into the copper pot he was holding with his other hand.

'Not until my boys have had themselves a little treat,' the vampire hunter said and took out a couple of parsnips he had found in an intact earth cellar.

Sypha rolled her eyes.

After feeding the parsnips to the geldings and hitching them to the wagon once again, the two travelers were off. Sypha, now holding the reins, was immediately in a better mood, looking at the road ahead with bright eyes. Trevor had to admit, she looked pretty happy, but how long was this honeymoon period going to last? A couple of days, probably, then it was all downhill. Until that happened, thoufh, Trevor supposed he might as well relax and make the most of it. The weather was nice and getting to be on the move once again was refreshing. They stopped at a ruined farmhouse for another break in the afternoon, eating the lunch they had prepared and packed for themselves at the castle. After this, they switched drivers yet again and kept going: if luck had it, they would make it to the next village before nightfall.

Trevor couldn't help but to note that now that he was at the reins again, Sypha returned to hanging onto him like touching him was a form of sustenance. At least she was leaning onto a different shoulder this time so she didn't wear one of them out faster than ther other.

'You really are clinging onto me a lot all of a sudden,' the vampire hunter remarked.

'Well, I have been holding myself back a whole bunch until now, actually,' Sypha justified. 'I am a very tactile person but I didn't want to come on too strong, lest you snatch me and carry me behind the nearest bush without hearing me out first.'

Trevor hemmed. He was about to let her know that her Alucard-ism wasn't appreciated even in jest, but the Speaker spoke out again before he had the chance to.

'Also,' she added, 'you are _very_ touchable now that you have bathed.'

'Oh, am I?' the vampire hunter questioned with sarcasm.

'Uh-huh,' Sypha responded casually. 'Even your smell is pretty nice now that you don't outright reek. Who would have guessed?'

This unexpected compliment gave Trevor pause. 'I... what?' he repeated incredulously. 'Never heard that one before.'

Sypha turned her head a little to side-eye him from under her brow, smirking mischievously. 'Probably because you don't bathe often enough,' she quipped.

' _Ha_ ,' Trevor responded stiffly, tensely.

This unexpected exchange had really thrown Trevor off, having him once again wonder whether Sypha was a virgin or not – every time he thought he had her pegged, she came out with something new that shifted his conclusion one way or the other. On one hand, she sometimes said some strange and even startlingly dirty things with a straight face, on the other she could say vaguely sexual things in such a ”tee hee” sort of manner that Trevor didn't want to believe someone who had actually had sex would say them. And once again, thanks to her being a Speaker, her casual touching of him told him little about how well acquainted she was with carnal pleasures.

Of course, it ultimately didn't matter much whether Sypha still had her maidenhood or not. He wasn't going to make things too complicated for himself by having sex with his friend, after all, at least not until the unlikely event that she won him over. Something that did matter to him was adjacent to this issue, though: if Sypha was an innocent bumbling girl, he was probably going to have a pretty easy time taking advantage of her inexperience to keep her at arm's length. If she knew how to excite a man, though, and got bold and persuasive with him, then... well, then Trevor had a bit of a challenge ahead of him. Especially when it came to sleeping arrangements.

Thankfully, he still had quite a bit of time to come up with a plan for that. The sun was taking its time climbing down from the sky and the pair still had hours of wakefulness after the sun had set. Apart from making progress, the most pressing issue they had was keeping themselves entertained while they slowly made their way forward. Sypha, being part of a living library, naturally took to spilling her contents once a stretch of silence had stayed even a minute past its welcome.

'You've gone mute again,' she told her traveling partner. 'Should I tell you a story? Perhaps a piece of our secret history?'

Just as Trevor turned his attention to her, she straightened her back, abandoning the support of his shoulder, and stretched her arms above her head.

'Isn't the whole point of secret histories to keep them, you know, secret?' the vampire hunter asked of her whilst she made a whining noise.

Sypha snickered as she let her arms fall. 'From people who might leak information to those who would use it against us, sure,' she agreed. 'But, you know better, don't you?'

'Hm, well... that's true,' Trevor muttered. 'Still, I think I would rather hear about something else than ancient history.'

'Oh?' the magician said, surprised. 'And what would that something be?'

'Well,' Trevor began somewhat hesitantly, 'you haven't said all that much about your childhood.'

Sypha raised an eyebrow. 'There's... not a whole lot to be said about my childhood, that's why,' she confessed. 'It's not out of the ordinary the way yours or Alucard's is.'

'Sypha, just the fact that you didn't live in a house is plenty strange to most people, including me,' the vampire hunter pointed out.

Said Speaker shrugged. 'I'm telling you, my childhood was pretty boring. It was just... nice,' she remarked. 'We traveled between towns, spending much of our time sitting in a wagon studying, learning languages and such. When we stopped, we, I and the other children, helped with chores and when we had the time, we played like any child would.'

She added, 'I have no major complaints. I can't think of anyone I would want to swap lives with, even though I envied outsider kids sometimes.'

'Really?' Trevor said with mild amusement. 'You envied them? Or us, rather.'

'Occasionally, sure,' Sypha admitted. 'Speakers don't own much of anything so I never had toys, not anything more than things we made ourselves from sticks and pinecones and the like. And short hair is convenient and all, but I would've loved to try growing out my hair like outsider girls, maybe even wear a pretty dress on some days.'

'Hmh. Right,' the Belmont heir grunted. 'That whole boy disguise thing.'

'Yeah...' the magician responded in a somewhat wistful tone. 'The worst part about it all, I think, was that it was hard to make friends with outsider girls,' she lamented. 'I would have preferred to play with them rather than outsider boys but people get really hung up on the short hair! Even when I told them I'm a girl, it took forever for them to accept me as such, so they would think I'm weird if I acted girly.'

'Wait,' Trevor said to this, 'you played with kids who weren't Speakers?'

'Sure, whenever outsider parents allowed us anywhere near their children,' Sypha answered like this was a given. 'As long as it was safe and as long as we didn't do mischief or play violent games, it wasn't a problem to Grandfather or the other adults. I was only forbidden when I started learning magic.'

She paused for a moment before she added under her breath, '...And even then, I sometimes sneaked out to do it.'

Trevor smirked. 'Naughty little rebel, eh?' he asked snidely.

'No, not really,' Sypha denied, unfazed. 'Not any more than my brothers and sisters, at least. Considering what was asked of me, I think I was actually _very_ obedient.'

'Was there something you had to deal with that other kids didn't, then?' Trevor inquired.

'Kind of,' the Speaker replied. 'I happened to learn the basics of magic way younger than I was supposed to. One of my older siblings told me bits and pieces about what he'd learned and I put it together on my own.'

'Huh,' her partner said. 'So you've always had a knack for that sort of thing. Completing spells or somesuch.'

'I don't think it was that impressive, actually,' Sypha said nonchalantly. 'But, it did really scare the adults – they thought I might hurt somebody or let outsiders see me do magic. So, even though I was pretty young for it, they decided to pull me aside and keep me busy studying all the time, so I wouldn't cause trouble.'

Trevor smirked. 'Uh, Sypha? You're only making yourself sound more like some sort of child genius,' he said. 'Just admit that you were one.'

Sypha clicked her tongue and rolled her eyes. 'Sure, I was a bit of an early bloomer,' she admitted reluctantly. 'And sure, aptitude with magic runs in the Belnades family. But still, I'm where I'm at because I worked very hard for it, not because I'm some kind of prodigy!'

'I'm not doubting that at all, you know,' Trevor assured her.

Sypha averted her gaze, a little bashful over how worked up she had gotten. 'Anyway,' she continued, trying to act as if this hadn't happened. 'I don't resent Grandfather for his choice at all. It felt a little unfair at first, studying while others got to play, but it was well worth it in the end.'

She looked into the distance, reminiscing, and snorted. 'By being a good girl and a good student, _I_ was soon the one with all the special freedoms!' she said proudly. 'I was Grandfather's pride and joy – he showed me off to other elders every time we met another Speaker caravan!'

Now it was Trevor who snorted. 'I see,' he said and looked at the road far ahead. 'So that's how you've become so incredibly cocky.'

Sypha hemmed and raised her chin, all high-and-mighty. 'My confidence is perfectly well proportioned in relation to my numerous virtues, thank you very much,' she stated.

Her traveling partner retorted, 'If by that you mean there's not enough excess to make you _completely_ insufferable, then sure.'

'Well,' Sypha said in a sweet, demure voice and fluttered her lashes, 'as long as I'm tolerated in Your Highness's presence.'

'Just barely,' the Belmont heir grunted, grinning.

Sypha gave him a dirty look, then grinned and leaned against his shoulder. For a moment, both of the travelers just smiled and gazed at the landscape, listening to the rattling of the wagon wheels. Trevor was intent on touching on a subject that he surmised might have been sore, however, and so his smile soon faded as he side-eyed the magician warily.

'You said you wouldn't want to trade lives with anyone...' he began, furrowing his brows. 'Didn't you ever wish you still had your parents?'

Sypha let out a pensive hum. She kept looking ahead as she answered the question with a question, 'Is it bad if my answer is, well... No, not really?'

Trevor gave her a quizzical look.

'I don't remember anything about my parents,' Sypha went on in a matter-of-fact manner whilst staring into the distance. 'And with the love and care I got from Grandfather and the other adults, I didn't feel like anybody was missing. Also, I wasn't the only child who didn't have my parents, so it just felt... normal, I suppose.'

She paused for a moment. Trevor glanced at her once again, studying her thoughtful, serious expression as she gazed at or through the hills far ahead.

'I guess...' she spoke again, hesitating. 'I did wish they were there whenever Grandfather talked about them. He always seemed so sad when he did so... and I didn't want him to be. So, I rarely even asked him about my parents.'

Trevor held his gaze for a beat, then returned his attention to the horses and the road.

'I see,' he said.

The travelers were quiet for a while once more. Eventually, Sypha, still leaning against her friend, raised her hand to poke his cheek with her finger, which earned her a bothered, questioning glare.

'Now that I have told you something, how about you teach me something new about night creatures?' she asked. 'I was too busy reading four hundred year old ledgers like a buffoon to memorise your family's bestiaries.'

Trevor hemmed. 'Eh. Might as well, I guess,' he responded. 'What monster do you want to hear about first?'

Like this, the two returned to good spirits, swapping information and more light-hearted stories, up until they began to pass more and more burnt farmhouses. There were toppled houses and barns, fences run over by panicked livestock, and said livestock just milling about, roaming the roads and the fields. There was nobody left to shepherd them back to their dwellings: their masters lay dead, cut up or blasted with fire, outside their houses, having been caught escaping their burning homes. The evening sun bathed all this in an unsuitably soft and welcoming glow, as if making light of the horror it had brought on these people by setting on them.

Thus, the two travelers weren't too optimistic about meeting survivors when they arrived at the village proper surrounded by these farms. And indeed, the place did look like just another ghost town. Most of the simple wooden buildings were burnt down to some extent and the doors to the few largely intact ones hung open, swinging and creaking eerily in the slight breeze. A stone church, its roof torn and its tower missing, stood on higher ground than the rest of the village, looming ominously above everything else. All that was immovable by wind was still – the village appeared abandoned.

'Another win for Dracula, it seems,' Trevor commented as the wagon rolled past destroyed houses yet again.

Just as he had said this though, Sypha tensed. 'Oh,' she said quietly, surprised, then squinted. 'No, I think I saw someone!'

Trevor, expecting her to point out what she was looking at, gave her an expectant glance, only to see her bring her hands up to both sides of her mouth and shout.

'Hello! Is anybody here?'

Her partner grimaced and fidgeted in utter frustration. 'They could be bandits, you nutter!' he growled.

'Good grief, in a sad place like this? the Speaker questioned irately. 'If it _is_ bandits, I have a pretty good feeling about my chances against the kind who go around scrounging through rubble for pots and pans and vegetables.'

' _Oy_ ,' Trevor snapped at her.

She wasn't listening, however: during this exchange, their survivor, whatever their profession, had poked their head around a corner of a mostly destroyed house about thirty paces away. As soon as she saw them, Sypha waved her hand at them enthusiastically, to which the unsure figure responded by stepping out into the open and waving back hesitantly. Whoever this person was, they seemed to have a broken arm: even from afar, the pair could make out that their right hand was hanging in a sling.

'Clearly not a bandit...' Sypha pointed out in a sing-song voice, making Trevor click his tongue.

'Alright, fine, not a bandit,' he admitted. 'But remember: we've only just gotten out of what used to be my family's jurisdiction. I know you want to gloat about our achievements but whatever you do, don't lead with who I am, okay?' he pleaded. 'At least get information out of him first, _before_ he realises who he's dealing with and gets his pitchfork.'

'Yes, yes, don't worry about it,' Sypha promised.

As the wagon rolled closer, the travelers saw that this person was an older gentleman with a bushy unkempt beard and greying hair - just a humble farmer or something of that ilk judging by his simple clothes. Even without the state of the village giving it away, it was plain to be seen that he had gone through a lot lately: not only was his arm injured, his face was full of nasty scratches and bruises. Amidst all that mess, the look in his sunken eyes was tired and nervous, as the man had seen too much for his sanity yet was compelled to remain vigilant.

'Hello good sir!' Sypha greeted the man as the geldings came to a slow stop next to him. 'Are you alone?'

The old-timer, who had just finished scanning Sypha up and down, was about to respond to her when, upon laying his eyes on Trevor sitting next to her and giving him the same treatment, he froze in place. It was hard to tell with his face being so banged up, but the look on it seemed to be one of utter incomprehension and horror, like he had just seen a ghost.

'A _Belm–_...' he blurted, his voice cutting off as he forcibly shut his mouth.

Trevor glowered at the man incredulously – how the hell had his cover been blown so quickly? He looked at Sypha... who was staring down at his chest for some reason. Trevor too glanced down at his chest as well and only now remembered: 'Ah, shit. I'm not wearing my cloak.'

He frowned at the big golden Belmont family crest on his tunic, then at Sypha. 'Why didn't you remind me?' he asked.

'Well I didn't remember either, not until I noticed him noticing it _,_ ' the magician excused herself, gesturing at the villager.

Trevor rolled his eyes and sighed. 'Alright, then,' he said and turned his attention back to the terrified old codger. Straightening his back and puffing up his chest a bit, the vampire hunter laid his spurned nobleman's haughtiness as thick as he could.

'Behold, old man, Trevor Belmont has returned. Rejoice!' he sneered. 'My friend and I killed fucking Dracula for you. Mind telling us what's been attacking you so we may discuss whether it's worth our time to kill it before we move on and never come back here again?'

This all was far too much for the timid, tired old man to absorb at once. 'Y-you what?' he sputtered.

Trevor's brow twitched with irritation. He came close to lashing out at the villager when he felt Sypha's hand on his shoulder.

'Trevor?' she called to him in a calm voice. 'Let me.'

The vampire hunter hemmed and threw his hands up in the air. Meanwhile Sypha exhaled, letting excess tension out of her body, and turned to the old man.

'Sir?' she beckoned. 'We're hunting night creatures. Are they still attacking this village?'

The villager, who was still only recovering from his initial shock of seeing a Belmont, swallowed and moistened his chapped lips, his jaw trembling with emotion. After a moment's consideration, he huffed, 'Yes, every bleedin' night.'

He waved his uninjured hand weakly at the destruction around him. 'Ever since a huge swarm of 'em came through, burnt down this whole village when they flew over us, there's been a smaller group that comes to hunt us every night,' he explained in a frail voice. 'There's only thirteen of us left and only because we hide in a cellar, like bloody rats.'

'What kind of creatures are they? And how many?' Sypha asked.

The old man shuddered and shook his head, seeming angry and disgusted. He glanced briefly at Trevor, who looked back at him with boredom, before he continued to speak.

'There's a few big black devils that fly and spit fire,' he described. 'Then there's at least two bird women that snag people off the ground and drop them out of the sky. And then there's a bunch of little ones that ride on all the flying ones. Dunno how many there are, they're fast and they jump all over the place.'

Trevor's stomach dropped as soon as he heard the words ”little” and ”jump all over the place.”

' _Ugh_ ,' he groaned, raking his fingers through his hair in frustration. 'Do the small ones look like tiny, hairy, filthy hunchbacked men?' he asked.

'Yes,' the old man replied immediately and raised his hand to carefully touch his bruised, scratched up face. 'Nearly scratched my eyes out, the bastards.'

Trevor rubbed his temples and hissed through his teeth in frustration. They _could_ have been something else than what he was fearing, but what were the chances that luck was on his side on this? If it ever could be _those things,_ it probably was, just to ruin his day.

'So we have fleamen,' Trevor iterated. 'Brilliant.'

Sypha gave him a quizzical look, then turned her attention back to the villager.

'And you said you hide from them in... a cellar?' she questioned.

'We got a big communal cellar dug into the hillside,' the old man explained. 'Every evening Father Petre drenches the ground around it with holy water so the monsters can't dig through, then we block the door. When they try to break through, we throw water at 'em and use pitchforks and poles to poke at 'em.'

'Huh,' Trevor said, quite surprised. 'I'm actually pretty impressed you've managed to get by with just that. I guess it's largely thanks to this particular gaggle of monsters not being equipped to deal with blockades, though.'

After this, there was a long pause. Sypha and Trevor looked expectantly at the old man, who looked like he was about to say something to them. Finally, after quite a bit of hesitation, he asked:

'So it's true, then?'

He looked at Trevor, then at Sypha.

'The king of vampires is real? And he did all this, and now he's dead?'

'Yes,' Sypha confirmed, smiling proudly. 'I, Trevor here, and Dracula's son killed him,' she said and patted the vampire hunter's shoulder guard.

Hearing this, the old man swallowed and gave the travelers a puzzled look, seeming to wonder what he was supposed to do with this information.

'I... guess you oughta tell the headman all this,' he stammered. Then, seeming both physically and spiritually fatigued, he hunched a little, let out a deep sigh, and turned around. 'Come on then,' he grunted and gestured at the visitors to follow him as he began walking towards the village centre. 'I'll take you to him.'

Sypha and Trevor looked at each other, then shrugged. They got down from their wagon, grabbed the horses by their halters, and began leading them and the wagon on foot. Since their guide ahead was moving at a snail's pace, Sypha peered past the head of her gelding to look at her traveling partner and to pop a question about what he had said before.

'So what are fleamen?' she asked innocently.

Trevor shuddered. 'The absolute _worst_ ,' he grumbled.

Sypha cocked her head like a curious dog.

'They're fairly small as far as monsters go,' Trevor elaborated and demonstrated the approximate height by leaning down a little to hold his hand at about the height of his knee. 'But they're fast and they jump at you when you least expect them, often in groups. Really hard to fend off with a whip, especially when you've been skimping on target practice as long as I have.'

'Hmm, I see,' Sypha said.

'So,' Trevor went on, 'if you could watch my back, that would be great. And do make use of walls for crowd control if it comes to it. Both fire and ice will do, but remember to use holy water for ice so those little shits can't climb it.'

'Sure. I can do that,' his friend confirmed.

Trevor nodded sternly. He felt a bit guilty about it, but he was going to leave his friend to deal with both of the most troublesome parts of their current undertaking: the fleamen and the villagers. His hackles bristled and he had fire in his belly already, yet he was hardly in the mood to quarrel with a bunch of Good People: he just wanted to get this whole thing done with and leave. Unfortunately, he had a feeling that things weren't going to be that simple.

When the travelers followed their guide to the centre of the village, they saw that the other survivors, almost as ragged as the old man was, were gathered around a well. There, they seemed to be preparing their arsenal of weapons for the night, judging by the priest being there, surrounded by a wide variety of containers that could hold water. There was also a man with a small axe sharpening wooden poles, ceasing his chore like the rest of the villagers upon the presence of unexpected visitors becoming known. All the survivors stared at them, seeming unsure whether they were good or bad news.

The two heroes shrugged off this attention and pulled their wagon aside, leaving it near the edge of the village square of sorts. Meanwhile, their guide hobbled up to his people, where a slightly less aged man in a long coat and a tall fur hat stepped forward to meet him. They had a brief exchange of words, during which the villagers ogled curiously at the travelers between expectant looks at the injured old man, until they all balked quite visibly at his words. They all turned to stare at the travelers in shock, which had Trevor rolling his eyes.

'Right...' he said under his breath, so quietly not even Sypha properly heard him. He took a very reluctant step towards his audience. 'Time for more nonsense.'

He and Sypha met the man with a fur hat halfway to the well, still within hearing range from the rest of the timid flock of survivors. This supposed headman seemed brave enough in comparison despite appearing quite rattled by the news he had just received.

'I _never_ would have thought I'd see another Belmont in these here parts, or anywhere actually,' he told the approaching vampire hunter in astonishment, barely even glancing in Sypha's direction.

Trevor shot a disapproving glare in the direction of the well, at the villagers gawking at him and Sypha, before coming to a stop. Then, he raised his eyebrows and raised his chin, looking down his nose at the headman in front of him.

'Make a big enough fuss about it and you won't have to look at me for long,' he said coolly, then nodded at Sypha standing beside him. 'My partner here though, I think she's already made up her mind about sticking around and helping you.'

While this was intended to shift the man's attention to Sypha, who would hopefully take over and speak for him, the villager unfortunately gave the Speaker only the briefest of glimpses before focusing on Trevor again. Though the headman tried to remain calm and collected, Trevor's threat to leave had clearly spooked him.

'Tis a shame what happened to you Belmonts,' he lamented nervously, then assured hastily: 'We had nothing to do with it!'

Trevor rolled his eyes again. The headman continued, speaking quickly but stiffly: 'The name's Grigore, by the way – I'm the headman of this village. We've been having a terrible time, just awful: just two nights ago a small monster slipped through our defences and injured two of us before we managed to kill it. I don't know how long we'll be able to manage without help.'

'Sir, we _will_ help you just as long as you cooper–' Sypha began, only to be cut off.

'I'm sure none of this would have happened if the _Belmonts_ were still around,' the headman kept blathering, barely taking note that the Speaker had said a word. 'Why, my grandfather used to tell me a story of how one of you saved our goats from a strange troll that sucks blood...'

Trevor clicked his tongue, now regretting his casual threat – he wouldn't have done it should he have known it would make the man grovel and babble like this. Just wanting to commiserate with someone, really, he gave Sypha a pained look, only for her to return his gaze with a determined nod and an air of steely resolve, as if she had been given an order to act. Trevor immediately had a moment of fright: what the hell had he just accidentally endorsed?

Well, he found out soon enough. Whilst the headman prattled along, Sypha suddenly looked behind her at the wagon. Then, she performed just about the most exaggerated cry of dismay.

'Oh _no_ , we forgot about the horses!' she exclaimed. She turned to her friend, begging: 'Oh Trevor, won't you _please_ take care of them? The poor things must be famished after we pushed them so hard!' She held her hand over her bandaged shoulder and lamented, 'I would do it myself but my arm hurts just _so much!'_

Trevor had to bite the inside of his cheek to not cringe and snort at the same time. Grigore, meanwhile, gave the Speaker a look of doubt and disapproval, then glanced around him, clearly intending to appoint one of the villagers to do this small task for the travelers. Sypha intercepted him, however, by stepping between him and Trevor.

'You see, my shoulder got clawed by Dracula, king of vampires himself,' she told the headman. Discreetly, with the hand clasped over her wound, she made a quick ”shoo, go away” gesture at her partner and continued, 'We – myself, Trevor, and Dracula's son Alucard – fought him in his castle, and won! It was quite the fearsome battle.'

Trevor blinked at the Speaker a couple of times until he realised: she really was just distracting the headman so he could slink away. Whilst the vampire hunter stared at her, the flustered headman tried to get a word in, only to be denied that luxury.

'Oh, I haven't introduced myself, have I?' Sypha continued. 'I am Sypha Belnades, Speaker magician. I used my magic to trap Dracula's moving castle. Did you know it can go wherever it pleases, just suddenly appear out of thin air?'

Trevor hemmed at his partner, who was quite cheekily using this opportunity of her own creation to make full use of her bragging rights. Not only that, she got to annoy someone who had snubbed her. Well, he didn't care as long as he got to stay out of it.

Thus, more than happy to make his escape, the vampire hunter turned around and went back to the wagon while his friend went on with her enthusiastic storytelling. He proceeded to unhitch the horses and put them in leads, then approached the pole-sharpening villager who was sitting a bit further away from the others congregated around the well. When Trevor asked him if there was a pasture the horses could be taken to, the shaggy, tired man called out for somebody, summoning a little boy no older than seven. When the child had tiptoed his way past the clutter of buckets, basins, pots, and pitchers of water sitting on the ground, his presumed father told him to take Trevor to somebody's house.

With that, the vampire hunter followed the child towards the edge of the village proper, near which there was a simple house with a couple of barns, burnt like the rest of the buildings, surrounded by paddocks with a few goats and a couple of oxen. As soon as Trevor had come to the place, his little guide gave him the slip without saying anything – whether it was because he was scared of him or because he just wanted to go back to listen to Sypha talking about killing things, the vampire hunter had no idea.

Whatever the case, he hardly minded the boy's lack of courtesy. His elders' behaviour, though, he was more bothered by that than he had expected. Though he had long since sworn off of caring about what others thought about him, with these ones it was different because... because he was still so close to home, he supposed. These people, or rather those of them who had been of age at the time of the Belmont estate raid, had known Trevor's family through more than hearsay, these people had been just a stone's throw away from where they had been murdered in cold blood. Yet, they had looked at him with much the same eyes as people who were genuinely far removed from what had happened. They hadn't earned that luxury.

Thinking bitter thoughts like these, Trevor was in no hurry whatsoever to be done with the horses and go back. Once he had gotten them into the paddock and taken off their leads, he stood around petting them for a while, hoping he looked like he had only just brought the animals and was just about to get going. When Sypha kept not turning up, though, and when he still didn't feel like returning to her, he got out of the paddock, leaned against the wooden fence, and just stood around, not even caring if he got reprimanded at this point.

By the time Sypha did show up, Trevor was thinking of heading back on his own accord. When he looked over his shoulder, having heard footsteps, the Speaker smirked and walked up next to him, arms folded.

'Is this what you've been doing all this time?' she asked her partner, bemused.

'Didn't feel like being gawked at like I've grown a second head, so,' Trevor muttered in response. 'Anyway,' he went on in a clearer voice, 'what was that Grigore fellow's problem with you? The fact you're a woman or the fact you're a Speaker?'

'Who knows?' Sypha said, shrugging. 'Could have been either, or both. It's usually a bit of both, I think.'

Trevor felt a small sting of guilt for not having considered her discomfort. 'Sorry for leaving you with him, I guess,' he apologised somewhat hesitantly. 'Although, you did seem like you didn't need me around.'

'It's fine,' Sypha confirmed. 'It was pretty eye-opening, finally dealing with that without Grandfather stepping in. And you looked like you might lose your patience and go off on the poor man, which would have been annoying.'

'Hm,' Trevor hemmed but didn't argue.

'So,' Sypha spoke up after a brief lull. 'Do you think you need time to, I don't know, have a good look around the cellar before the raid party arrives?' she asked. 'It really is just that though, an unusually big sturdy cellar dug into the foot of a hill.'

'No, I don't think so,' Trevor drawled, bored. 'But, let's get going anyway...'

The two headed back to the well, where a couple of villagers were grabbing the last few containers of holy water to carry them to the cellar. Their saviours followed them there, going around the hill that the small church was on, to find the rest of the villagers gathered near the entrance to their small hidey hole. While Sypha exchanged a few words with them, Trevor stood back and took a gander at his surroundings: the place was quite open, right at the edge of a small graveyard. Some rubble, perhaps left over from a building that had been there before the graveyard had been established, lay in piles nearby but apart from that, the area in front of the cellar was just a thin trail going through an area dominated by weeds.

'So, what do you reckon?' Sypha asked of her partner curiously once she came back from the gaggle of villagers.

'Kind of a weird place for a cellar big enough to fit all these people,' Trevor commented. 'Are they sure they're not storing their turnips and whatnot in some ancient lord's cursed tomb?'

'I... don't know,' his partner said. 'Do you want me to ask them for you?'

The vampire hunter snorted. 'Nope, no need.'

After this the travelers faffed about for a while, just waiting for the sun to set. Once the villagers felt it was time, they all went into the cellar, the door to which Sypha blocked with ice. Meanwhile, Trevor moved the buckets of water left for them around, making sure they weren't in the way of fighting. Soon enough, the hunters were alone, watching the sun disappear behind some tall hills in the distance.

'Could those bastards just come already?' Trevor groaned when no monsters showed up immediately afterwards.

'I know plenty of word games if you're bored,' Sypha told him with a smirk.

'I mean… I am,' the vampire hunter said flatly, 'but not enough to want to play a game you'll completely obliterate me at, _Speaker_.'

'Awh,' his partner said, disappointed.

For a moment afterwards, everything in the village was still and the place seemed almost normal. With mostly just the dark silhouettes of the ruined buildings visible, it was easier to ignore that the vast majority of them were utterly ravaged. The only things in the sky were a sizeable flock of jackdaws over the empty fields outside the village proper, the incessant high-pitched cawing of their late evening procession faint from a distance. Soon even that died down as the birds agreed where they would settle down for the night.

Then, finally, something of unusual size and speed appeared in the sky. Mere specks appeared in the lingering orange glow of the sunset but gradually grew to proportions far greater than any ordinary bird.

'They're here,' Trevor said quietly and took the Morning Star off his belt.

Before they could properly see any of the creatures in detail, they witnessed a series of yellow-orange flashes. A barrage of flames was coming their way and, as Trevor correctly guessed when he glanced in her direction, Sypha was on it: just as the projectiles were about to pass over them, they came to a halt.

'They weren't targeting us, those were headed for the door,' the Speaker told Trevor. A confident smile curled her lips as she readied a hand signal and looked up to the night sky. 'They have no idea what they're up against!'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trevor: ...
> 
> Trevor: ... *inhale*
> 
> Trevor: TIS I! NEVER FEAR-


	8. A Good Christian Boy

Trevor took a long overdue deep breath and surveyed the mess around him. He counted the splashes of gargoyle giblets and goo on the ground, left behind by them getting blown up by the Morning Star: one, two, three... four. The fifth one was the harpy, as was easily discernible from all the feathers scattered around the splash zone.

Then there were the fleamen, which he couldn't count, had no reason to: he had no idea how many of them had originally been there in the first place, not to mention he had no way of seeing inside the white frosty mass that Sypha had enveloped them in. He was just going to have to be careful, just in case there were more lurking about.

Now, about that second harpy... where was it, or its remains at least? Trevor didn't recall killing it, but maybe Sypha had gotten it. He thought back to how the battle had progressed – the gargoyles had shot fire at them, then the two harpies had swooped in, bearing a disgusting gift of fleamen raining down on them. The Morning Star had felled one of the harpies then and there while Sypha had made the ground underneath them a sea of ice spikes, causing a couple of fleamen fall down to their death, but since that hadn't taken care of all of them, Sypha had created a ring of fire to keep the remaining ones at bay. Trevor had then gotten an idea: he would make a run towards the four gargoyles, prompting the fleamen to give chase, which would hopefully line the little pests up for a one-shot kill with magic.

And so now Trevor was here, surrounded by gargoyle remains, with a sneaking suspicion that the one harpy that was still unaccounted for was out to get him. Though he didn't want to take his eyes off his immediate surroundings, lest he be jumped on by a fleaman on the loose, he turned his eyes up to the dark sky, squinting.

But then, out of absolutely nowhere, he felt a harsh chill against his back. It was a literal icy wind that went right through his clothes, making him spin around in alarm – what was Sypha doing?

As he did this, he was treated to a kind of lurid horror show he had never seen before. His attention was first drawn to the huge ice spike that had just formed behind him, pointing away from him at an upwards angle. Then, his eyes darted to the huge bird woman hurtling towards him, its talons extending far ahead from its body to grasp its prey. Lastly, he and the harpy both watched helplessly as the freshly materialised ice spire sunk into the abdomen of the monster's rather human-like body. The harpy made no noise while it was still movement, so both it and the monster hunter heard rather clearly the sound its flesh made when it was impaled - only when the creature had come to a disturbingly slow stop sliding down towards the thickening base of the icicle that its mouth let out a weak chitter. The horrific realisation of what had happened to it came around the same time, plainly visible in its keen hawk-like eyes before they got clouded with pain. Trevor stared at all this blankly, frozen in place, barely breathing. 

'Sorry about that!' Sypha's voice hollered from somewhere nearby. 'It kept dodging everything I threw at it! So annoying.'

Trevor, still staring at the dying night creature, inhaled sharply before tearing his eyes off of this disturbing sight. As hardened as he was, he had a feeling that for a while after this, he was going to have trouble not seeing repeats of this whenever he closed his eyes.

'Was that the last of them?' he asked from his comrade, who had just jogged over to him.

'It should be!' Sypha responded.

As far as either one could tell, it really was, because even after a careful search of the surrounding area, graveyard and all, nothing else seemed amiss. With that done, Sypha went and relayed the good news down to the villagers huddled in the cellar: they were safe for the time being. When the timid people braved the darkness outside, seeing the disarray of ice and monster remains, they were quite perturbed at first, then relieved. And then, before anyone knew it, they were curiously examining and collecting the harpy feathers strewn on the ground, wondering if they could be used for something.

Seeing this, the monster hunters gave each other a look of amusement and, since Belnades & Belmont wasn't a cleaning service, decided to leave the villagers to deal with the mess however they saw fit. After informing them that they were going to have their well earned rest, the two made their way back to the wagon, where they ate some stale bread and dry fruits, chatted, changed the bandage on Trevor's hand, and lastly settled down for the night.

A certain problem arose, though, and it seemed rather persistent. In about half an hour into lying under the covers, back-to-back like they had done at the Belmont manor ruins, it became too much for either hero to ignore. Namely, both of them were still fully alert and it didn't seem like either one was going to fall asleep anytime soon.

'Well... this is annoying,' Sypha finally said. 'I'm tired but not even the least bit sleepy.'

Trevor, with his eyes fixed on the clutter of everyday items piled up in front of him on the wagon floor, let out a deep sigh.

'It's because we are still prepared to fight,' he surmised. 'I'm sure it'll go away if we just stay calm and quiet.'

His partner made a sound just to signal that he had been heard, then everything became quiet again. After just a couple of minutes of tense silence, though, the thing that Trevor had been dreading happened: he felt Sypha rolling over to face his back.

'Trevor…' she spoke softly. 'Is there anything other than sleep that you would like to do tonight?'

The vampire hunter felt a wave of heat spreading throughout his body, then an impulse to shrivel into a ball and roll somewhere far away.

'Well, about that,' he said sternly, stiffly, 'I've decided I'm not going to bed you until I've had a word with your grandfather.'

' _What?'_ Sypha questioned, utterly incredulous. 'Why?'

Trevor squirmed in discomfort. He fancied himself a decent liar but what he was about to say was so out of character for him, he couldn't help but to wonder if it was going to be convincing enough no matter how well he put it.

'I respect your grandfather enough to give him a fair warning first, that's why,' he answered.

'But... why would he need to know anything about what we're doing?' Sypha asked, still confused.

'Well, if I had a kid, I wouldn't want some stranger having his way with her without my blessing,' Trevor justified. 'So, I'm not going to do that to him.'

At last, Sypha seemed to understand where he was coming from, but she didn't like it at all. 'God damn it, you Christians and your... _urgh_ ,' the Speaker growled under her breath.

'Complain all you like, but I'm not budging on this,' Trevor told her nonchalantly.

The vampire hunter fell quiet and listened, waiting for a response. He had a feeling that his partner was giving him the stink eye behind him until at last, she breathed a deep exasperated sigh.

'Alright, fine,' she conceded with a mutter. 'Let's play good godly people for a while if it's really _that_ important to you.'

Trevor chuckled. Really, this had actually _worked?_ He almost started point out a whole slew of things they were doing that no ”good godly people” would be caught doing when, thankfully, his partner interrupted his train of thought by speaking.

'So,' she said with a sharp exhale, 'sex is out of the question... Can we do something else, then? I'm not going to fall asleep anytime soon and you don't sound like you're about to, either.'

'What do you have in mind?' the Belmont heir questioned doubtfully.

His friend made a contemplative noise. 'Well... how about target practice?' she suggested.

Now it was Trevor's turn to be baffled. ' _What?_ ' he snapped, coming very close to raising his head and looking at the Speaker over his shoulder.

'It still bothers me that I couldn't hit that bird thing,' Sypha reasoned. 'And you said you haven't been practicing with your whip as much as you should.'

Oh dear, he _had_ said something like that, hadn't he? But still, Trevor was at a loss – this was just the most outlandish, most out-of-place proposal. Yet, he supposed it was better than just tensely marinating in this tension between him and Sypha until he fell asleep so...? He gave the suggestion a very serious ponder and to his surprise, he hated it less and less by the second.

'You know what...' Trevor muttered after a while. He pondered quietly for a moment longer. Eventually he just shrugged, saying, 'Fuck it... Might as well.'

With that, the two got up, walked out to the village centre, and, with Sypha lighting the night with magic, they began working on each others' aim, taking turns trying to hit increasingly distant targets that Sypha had made out of ice. They had an unexpectedly nice time doing this, although they did also just chat and goof off almost as much as they actually put any work in. Sypha came with a way to even combine these activities by insisting that Trevor try wielding his consecrated leather whip and the Morning Star at the same time. This, quite predictably, led to the weapons becoming intertwined.

'See? I told you it's a bad idea,' Trevor snickered before beginning to pull in and untangle the two holy weapons. 'It's never going to work.'

'Come on, don't say that,' Sypha admonished him. 'I've never seen anyone as able to use both hands as you are, I'm sure you can get it to work if you just practice,' she said, then patted his shoulder reassuringly. 'I believe in you!' she said with a snicker.

Trevor flinched and gave the woman a startled, questioning look. Not knowing what to say in response, he grumbled something barely coherent as he kept untangling the whip from the chains. When he was done, he spoke up in a clearer voice, having come up with an idea.

'Well, I _might_ do that, but only if you promise to do something as stupidly difficult in return,' he told the Speaker.

Sypha raised an eyebrow at him.

'You heard me,' Trevor told her.

Surprised, the magician fluttered her eyelashes for a moment, then stroked her chin and looked up in deep thought.

'Hmmm... lightning magic, maybe?' she suggested. 'Dealing with that is something I've been putting off for a long time.'

Her comrade narrowed his eyes in suspicion. 'How do I know that's not something you're going to pretend you're no good at when really, you've already mastered it?'

Sypha rolled her eyes. 'Look... I'll show you,' she said and raised her hands. She held them in front of her, palms facing each other like she was holding a ball with them, then glowered intently at the empty space between. Trevor watched with mild interest as her arms and fingers twitched a little, as did her brow and the corners of her mouth, yet nothing seemed to happen.

'Oh for crying out loud,' she soon groaned, then closed her eyes and took deep breaths. 'Come on,' she said as she opened her eyes again.

Sure enough, after another ten seconds of nearly motionless struggling, there was finally a spark in the space between her palms. Then, there was an ever so slightly bigger one, and then, there was a sudden thick arc of lightning that shot out of her hands, hitting the ground with a sharp crackle and a bang. As Sypha recoiled from this, the ball of light luminating the village square dissipated, leaving the monster hunters in darkness. Meanwhile they, royally startled, merely stared at where the lightning had been for less of a second, the shape of it burnt into their corneas.

' _See?'_ Sypha said, agitated, and pointed down at where the miniature lightning strike had happened. 'It's so hard to use! How are you supposed to get it out and control it when nobody's even sure what it does inside our bodies?'

'No kidding,' Trevor responded, hardly harbouring any more doubts. 'You... work on that, I guess, somewhere far away from me and the horses.'

'That will have to wait for some other day,' the magician said with a huff. 'I think I'm ready to give sleep another try.'

The vampire hunter was, too, and so the two returned to the wagon, laid down, and bid their good nights to each other once again. Trevor stayed awake for quite a while afterwards, staring into the dark and thinking troubled thoughts even past Sypha tumbling into a quiet rest. He... had made that promise about learning double wielding as if he was going to stay with this woman long enough to learn it. Sure, he could just reframe it, think of it as something he had promised in case they met again sometime in the distant future, but currently he knew it, he felt it: even if only for a moment, he had forgotten that he was only supposed to be pretending. Hearing someone encourage him, he had looked forward to seeing the look of surprise and perhaps even pride on Sypha's face when he actually pulled that stunt off.

Bloody hell, he needed to be more careful about things like these. Trying to live up to other people's expectations only ever led to disappointment, frustration, and contempt, after all. Having strengthened his conviction, he closed his eyes and cleared his mind, just forcibly kicking out anything resembling a line of thought until he fell asleep at last.

The rest of the night was peaceful. Despite the clear skies, the temperature didn't dip below freezing and so the travelers' first morning in their wagon was mercifully mild. Sypha woke up before Trevor did, squinting as the light from the low rising sun made the wagon's canvas above her look excessively bright to her eyes for a moment. She had rolled on her back in her sleep, she noted, making her wonder if she had tossed and turned a lot, but considering that Trevor was soundly asleep in the same position she had left him, she doubted it.

Mesmerised, the magician found herself just staring at the hunter's broad back and messy brown hair. She couldn't help but to smile - she was still confused but relieved and happy all the same that things had worked out so well, that her handsome, exquisitely rare lion really was _hers_ now. She felt as though her childhood dream of being one of the chosen few to befriend and tame a unicorn, a dragon, a mighty roc, or some other magical beast had come true. Or, well, perhaps not quite that. It was just Trevor, after all. He was a little special but he was still a mere man, a silly one at that.

And she was a silly woman, apparently. She hadn't lied to Trevor about his scent - for whatever reason, she just couldn't get enough of it now that it wasn't overpowering. What was she, a dog? She sure felt like she might have been one as she tensed and listened to Trevor's breaths so intently she felt like her ears might have actually moved. Was he sound asleep?

He was, it seemed. After a moment's hesitation, Sypha made her move: careful as to not to wake the man up, she slithered closer to him and pressed her face into his shirt. When she took a deep breath, she tried to think of what, apart from sweat, her partner's smell made her think of – leather, moss, broth, dirt, wet blanket, maybe a hint of onion? It shouldn't have been an enjoyable combination yet it was: it was warm and both comforting and exciting in a way that was hard to put into words. Some other men before him, too, had occasionally made her do a bit of a double take when they had passed her by, but this was new.

Sadly, this smell was no doubt going to go stale and become too intense in a couple of days, up until Trevor had another bath and washed his clothes. And after that, it was going to be very faint for a day or so, at least. So... if she wanted him to be just right for when they reached their caravan and presumably had sex for the first time, she ought to have him bathe a couple of days before.

This errant thought made Sypha's cheeks blush. She pouted a little as she pulled her face away from her partner – this was not at all how things had supposed to go! The way she had imagined it, her beastman would have jumped at the chance to have her. She, then, would have magnanimously agreed to alleviate his animalistic urges. Never in a million years would she have guessed that Trevor would instead turn out to be a bit of a _prude!_ Nor would she have previously believed that _she_ would be disappointed to not have sex with him. Just a smidgen, though, and mainly because she was curious about how it was going to go, but still, this wasn't like her at all.

The Speaker breathed a deep, troubled sigh. There was nothing to worry about, she reminded herself: Trevor was attracted to her, he was just taking his time, maybe flaunting his self-control a little... right? Right. And as long as he let her have other forms of closeness, she was fine.

Having made this clear to herself, Sypha finally pulled herself away from her partner, sat up, and tried to shake her partner awake. It was pretty early but, well, she wanted to get back on the road as quickly as possible. Alas, as soon as he was anywhere close to waking up, Trevor recoiled from her and mumbled an annoyed, wordless plea under his breath. Finding this both amusing and weirdly precious, Sypha snorted at him and turned her shaking into a rub and a pat of his upper arm.

'Alright, sleep a while longer then, you big baby,' she told him.

Sypha got up and took some water from their water barrel to have a drink and to wash her face and armpits. Then she filled the horses' feed bags with grain and took them to the paddocks so the geldings could have their breakfast – this took around twenty minutes. When she returned to the wagon, then, she thought Trevor would have had the sense to get up on his own but no, he was still snoozing. Now, finally, Sypha was putting her foot down: no mercy.

'Wake up, Trevor,' she commanded the man and stopped to nudge him with her foot before she stepped past him. 'I'm going to blast your behind with freezing winds if you don't get up soon.'

Trevor made an unhappy sound and squirmed under his covers. Glowering at him, Sypha decided that if he wasn't up by the time she had topped up on her self-care, she was going to follow up on her threat. With that decided, she figured she ought to top up on self-care. In preparation, she turned her back to her partner and untied her sash, then took her robe off. She loosened her skirt and tugged the hem of her top upwards, baring her stomach, before she kneeled down on the wagon floor.

Now then: slow inhale, slow exhale, calm mind. The magician thought of sour things that made her mouth pucker, of purple grapes on a vine, shrinking and turning green. She then raised her hand to touch her lips with her middle and index finger and as she did this and held her breath, a faint glow began emanating from her fingertips. She proceeded to moved her hand down and touch her lower abdomen with her glowing fingers, causing the bottom of her stomach to cramp slightly. Done with this ritual, Sypha resumed breathing and, whilst the uncomfortable muscle spasms still went on, readjusted her clothes.

As she did this, Trevor surprised her by speaking up.

'I think I saw you do that earlier, at the ruins...' he said in a raspy morning voice. 'What is it?'

Sypha turned her head around to look at the man over her shoulder. He was looking over his shoulder as well, still laying on the wagon floor. The magician raised a questioning eyebrow at him – had he been watching this entire time?

'It's a spell called the Touch, or Kiss, of Unripening,' she explained and looked back down at her skirt to tighten it at the waist. 'It's a very basic spell that prevents menstruation.'

'Huh,' Trevor responded in mild surprise as he rolled on his back. 'I guess it _would_ be kind of inconvenient to bleed on the road, wouldn't it.'

'Not to mention all the pregnancies that would happen,' Sypha added and stood up. She then immediately leaned down to grab her robe and her sash off the floor.

Trevor, meanwhile, seemed confused by her comment. 'What?' he blurted, sounding baffled.

Sypha, who was about to pull her robe over her head, halted for a moment and gave him a look of incredulity. Seeing how quickly it was turning to one of despair, Trevor scrambled.

'No, _no_ , stop looking at me like that, _right now_ ,' he commanded his traveling partner, his cheeks getting a bit red from embarrasment. 'I'm not that stupid, I know full well that women have to be able to bleed to conceive! I just didn't think of you Speakers as ones to take part in carnal pleasures a whole lot, that's all.'

The magician blinked at him with a blank expression a couple of times, then rolled her eyes but also sighed in relief. For a moment, the possibility of having to explain to him where babies came from had just crossed her mind and she was not at all prepared for anything like that. Much less a sudden realisation of his that he had quite possibly left a long trail of bastard children behind him.

'Haven't you heard the stories, Trevor?' she asked sarcastically. 'The ones about our Satanic rituals where we sacrifice and devour infants, then put the next batch of sacrifices underway with a wild orgy? Or at least the one about how our men share us Speaker women all equally, passing us around like bread?'

'Well,' Trevor said with a shrug. 'I figured that since the clergy is spreading that around, the opposite is probably true.'

'Also,' he added, 'I can't remember if I've ever seen a or heard of a Speaker who's clearly expecting, or a lot of Speaker children running around. But, if you just do away with your ability to get knocked up, then I guess that explains it.'

Sypha nodded, then pulled her robe over her head. 'Yeah. Sex is important to us Speakers, having children less so,' she said in a somewhat distant voice. 'Being able to feel carnal pleasure without shame, having the means to have even the most reproductive kinds of sex without conceiving – we regard those as significant victories over our cruel Creator who made sex an urge, a sin, and a burden at the same time.'

Trevor let out a mildly interested hum. 'So, are you saying that there's actually something to the rumours about Speakers and fornicating all the time?' he asked.

Sypha hemmed as she put her arm through her only intact sleeve. 'No,' she denied. 'Being wise, composed, and able to find a harmonious balance between work and pleasure is the sign of a mature Speaker. This is something we are all taught to aspire to and if we fail to meet that standard, that _is_ a common source of shame.'

'So what about the immature ones?' Trevor asked. 'Red-blooded young lads who don't care about being mature yet.'

Sypha shuddered quite visibly. ' _Ugh_ ,' she groaned, grimacing while tying her sash. 'Whenever two caravans meet...' she began, then deliberated for a moment. 'Well, the young ones are encouraged to _get to know each other._ To get rid of their excesses, basically _,_ ' she explained unenthusiastically. 'Apart from that, young Speakers are expected to take care of their urges without bothering others.'

'So, how much of a troublesome youngster were you, then?' Trevor asked her slyly. 'Did you sneak out to meet Christian boys like you used to sneak out to play?'

Sypha found the question so hilarious, she let out a short sputtering laugh. ' _No_ ,' she responded whilst giving her partner an amused, slightly patronising look. 'I had enough trouble trying to be endeared by advances from other Speakers! I had no interest in getting them from people who would treat me like half a person, if that.'

Trevor narrowed his eyes. 'So are you still a virgin, or...?'

Sypha shook her head. 'No I'm not,' she answered plainly whilst smoothing the front of her robe. 'And, I feel no shame for having broadened my horizons. Is that a problem?'

The magician pressed her lips together into an inexpressive line as she waited for Trevor's answer. Though she refused to feel a hint of shame over what she had done, she couldn't help but to be little nervous. After all, he was insisting on abstinence until he had her grandfather's blessing – what if he wasn't okay with her being ”impure”? There was some tension in the air, then, as Trevor blinked a couple of times, looking Sypha in the eye, until he finally shrugged.

'Nope,' he said nonchalantly. 'I was an embarrassingly randy, skirt-chasing lad at my worst. I would feel like a bloody hypocrite if I stuck my nose up at a girl for not being untouched, after having been so resentful towards girls who intended to remain that way.'

Sypha, even whilst feeling a wave of relief, raised an eyebrow at this. 'Are you sure you're not a skirt-chaser now?' she asked, ever so slightly worried.

Trevor let out a sharp breath through his nose. 'I have my urges, like most men, and I've been known to find my way into someone's bed from time to time,' he admitted. 'But, few people like a Belmont going for their women, even the paid ones, and there's only so much trouble a lay is worth. As soon as I had the sense to, I taught myself to get by with as little as possible.'

Sypha nodded. 'Alright,' she said, knitting her brows a little. Her mouth became a dry and her cheeks a little red as she thought about what she wanted to say. 'Even then...' she began reluctantly. 'If you, for whatever reason, aren't, uh, satisfied with what I have to provide... I would like you to say something. Okay?'

Now, finally, the vampire hunter was taken aback by something she had to say about sex. His brows flew up and eyes widened for a moment as he stared at his partner blankly, his gaze turning slightly more inward by the second. 'Uh... Okay,' he stammered in response.

Neither Sypha or Trevor suddenly wanted to linger on this issue a moment longer. The vampire hunter got up in awkward silence, his Speaker partner got out ahead of him, and the two quickly got busy making the rest of their travel preparations.

The villagers, though visibly relieved and in better spirits overall, regarded them with as little gusto now as the day before. When it came time for the hunters to leave, these ordinary folk all looked somewhat uneasy as they congregated at the village square to see them off. The headman tried to be somewhat ceremonious as he handed Trevor a little something, just some very basic supplies and not very many of them, and it failed to be anything more than clumsy and weird. Everyone wanted the travelers gone from the village, including the travelers themselves.

Thus, they took no time than was strictly necessary: as soon as the headman was done blathering, the hunters got on their wagon, said their terse farewells, and began driving off. Sypha leaned out to wave at the villagers, but not for long – as soon as she deemed it polite, she sat up straight again and turned her attention to her traveling partner, who was the one at the reins.

'So. We are going to spend the night on the road, then?' she asked.

'Yeah,' Trevor grunted. 'There's no way we're going to reach the fort today.'

'Oh boy, a fort... we get to deal with soldiers, then,' his Speaker friend breathed out, slightly peeved.

'You don't like soldiers?' Trevor questioned. 'Because they're... violent?' he guessed.

'A lot of people are violent but few of them are actually troublesome unless you get to their bad side,' Sypha responded casually. 'Soldiers though?' she scoffed. 'They have a fondness for accusing us Speakers of being spies for their enemies. They also have the tendency to come to Speaker caravans at night, blind drunk, where they start smashing our things, saying they're not leaving unless it's with a girl under each arm. And of course, there's not much we can do about any of this without provoking further violence.'

Trevor gave the magician a questioning, somewhat concerned look. Suddenly realising that she had made this affair sound quite grim, Sypha made dismissive gesture with her hands.

'This has happened to our caravan only once, though!' she assured the man with a sheepish smile. 'Almost twice, but the second time the attackers were so drunk they passed out before they could do much damage. Anyway, the important part is, nobody got hurt. And things, they are replaceable.'

Trevor took a sharp breath to speak up, only to end up saying nothing after all. He just shook his head, looking annoyed. Not knowing what to say in order to address whatever bothered him, Sypha didn't say anything, either. After a bout of silence, she started a conversation about something else entirely and so, the issue was dropped and forgotten... or so it seemed, until much later.

The travelers had short breaks every now an then and had a proper longer one sometime after noon, when they came to another attacked and abandoned farmhouse. They figured this was as good a place to rest as any and so, they got some pottage going, made with millet, vegetables, and salted pork, and since Sypha was content stirring and watching it come along over plentiful embers, Trevor went and snooped around the place. Upon seeing what seemed like an intact wooden stool laying near some debris, even Sypha did some looting too, if grabbing something to sit on for the remainder of her break counted.

When Trevor returned, empty-handed it seemed, he saw the stool and decided he didn't want to sit on the ground either. Sypha snickered at him when he returned with a bucket, not having found another stool, and plopped it on the ground upside down.

'So, Sypha,' he began casually as he sat on the bucket, acting as if that was the sole purpose it had ever existed for.

'Yes?' the magician responded while stirring the pottage.

'What do you think your family's going to think when we meet them again?' her partner asked. 'About, you know... _us.'_

Sypha hummed, feigning deep contemplation even though she knew exactly what her answer was going to be. 'They will be happy for us,' she replied cheerily.

'What makes you so sure?' Trevor questioned, folding his arms.

Sypha let the pottage be, breathing a short sharp sigh as she sat back down on her stool. She supposed that, even though she was inclined to give a pretty rosy picture of her dear family to outsiders, she could be a bit more fortright with Trevor about her issues with them.

'Well, the truth is,' she began a little stiffly, 'they all knew I was going to leave one day, I think.' She gave Trevor a knowing, somewhat weary look and continued, 'If nothing else, they will be glad it's happening in a way that didn't make us all look and feel bad.'

Trevor seemed intrigued. 'And how did they know?' he asked, stroking his stubble.

Sypha hemmed and her expression turned wry. 'Arn's going to be the next elder, for one thing,' she replied. 'If not in name, then at least in spirit.'

The vampire hunter clicked his tongue, sounding disappointed. When his friend gave him a quizzical look, he asked: 'Isn't he a bit young?'

That did absolutely nothing to explain his apparent disappointment, but... Oh well.

'He is,' Sypha responded. 'But, that's just how things are. Though the others think he's a little harsh, he speaks for most of our group and as Grandfather has said, he will probably become more mellow and rounded with age.'

'Huh,' Trevor responded. 'Well, okay... but why does him being the leader mean you have to leave?'

Sypha let out a soft, wistful hum and looked at the embers glowing under the pot. 'It's... complicated,' she murmured. 'I think I would have started to feel like something has to change, either with everyone else or myself. I don't want to force such a change on my family any more than I want to force it on myself. So.. I would eventually have chosen to leave so we can all be ourselves and be happy.'

She turned her gaze back up at Trevor, who looked like he was trying to understand a concept wholly alien to him. After a moment, he seemed to just give up.

'Where would you have gone, then?' he asked. In a brief moment, he added, 'Assuming none of this Dracula nonsense ever happened, I guess.'

Sypha emitted a contemplative hum and stood up to tend to the pottage again.

'I _have_ always wanted to see my other blood relatives,' she answered, watching her wooden spoon stir her loose millet vegetable porridge. 'But, most of the Belnades family has fled Europe in search of places where practicioners of magic are more welcome. I know my uncle and his family headed towards India a long time ago, so... If I hadn't been needed here, I guess I would have started with that.'

Trevor raised his eyebrows and drew his head back, appearing to not quite believe what he was hearing. 'With India?' he repeated.

'Yes,' Sypha answered plainly as she stopped stirring the pottage and sat back down.

'All by yourself?' her partner questioned.

Sypha shrugged. 'Well, I would have hopped from caravan to caravan for as much of the way as possible but I would have needed to travel quite a bit without other Speakers too, surely,' she said casually.

'Amazing...' the vampire hunter uttered in awe and disbelief. 'You're completely daft.'

'Excuse me?' Sypha sputtered.

'You heard me,' Trevor told her. 'You would have ended up dead in a ditch in no time.'

'I can defend myself just fine!' the magician spat.

'From obvious threats, sure,' Trevor agreed, 'but you're too much of a Speaker to stand a chance against the rest. Real hardened criminals don't come out threatening to smash your things, you know, they'll hide or convince you they're not a threat and slit your throat in your sleep. All for a couple coins, or even just for the hell of it.'

Sypha was appalled – this was their disagreement about Lacul Vulturilor all over again, except worse!

'You think I don't know about robbers and bandits, really?' Sypha huffed incredulously. 'I have traveled longer than you have, Trevor, and just because I didn't do it all alone doesn't mean it was all just a fun little romp!'

Trevor rolled his eyes and held his hands up. 'Not once have I claimed anything of the sort, just so you know,' he spoke calmly, indifferently. 'All I'm saying is, your people and your travels might have prepared you for a lot of things, but it's pretty clear that they haven't prepared you to go half across the known world by yourself.'

This seemed a lot more reasonable, Sypha reckoned. Just as she was going to chime in, however, Trevor made a swerve.

'Frankly,' he continued dryly, 'the fact that you think you'd be just fine shows a worrying lack of common sense if you ask me, even for you. My guess is that just a day into going alone, you'd be without your travel rations, because you keep bumping into people who you think need it more than you do. Things are _replaceable_ , after all.'

It took just about everything Sypha had to keep herself from thoughtlessly lashing out at this point. She, however, was going to have to be able to sit on the same wagon with this man soon enough, not to mention that she just _had_ to be the bigger person here. And so, without looking at him, she took a deep, deep calming breath before she opened her mouth again.

' _Well_ ,' she began, poison dripping from her voice. 'I never said anything about actually making it _”just fine,”_ did I?' she enunciated, then got up. 'I just said that I would have a go at it,' she stated as she turned around to leave.

'Where are you going?' Trevor asked, not particularly concerned.

'To get our bowls,' Sypha replied sharply as she stomped away from him. 'Take the pot off the embers while I'm gone.'

The two had their meal in awkward silence. Sypha didn't understand what Trevor's problem was but she was going to give him a wide breadth for a while, a _long_ while. She was doing that in spirit, anyway, since there was only so much space on the wagon. With that in mind, she took the reins when they set out again and kept her eyes on the road, the geldings, the slowly changing landscape, anything but the Belmont next to her.

Alas, as much as she would have liked to have believed she could keep this up indefinitely, she knew full well she couldn't. She would inevitably relent before this stubborn donkey did and feeling like she was going to die of boredom, she would start making peace with him again. She couldn't help it, sulking and holding grudges was boring and exhausting! As long as she felt like she could, though, she was going to protest by sucking joy out of the air, bringing down the mood as much as she could.

Damn it. Things had gone so well up to this point – what on earth had gotten into Trevor all of a sudden?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nobody:
> 
> Nobody at all:
> 
> Sypha's olfactory system: Ah yes, another rude scruffy one crosses our path. He will do nicely.
> 
> On a completery unrelated note, Touch of Unripening sounds like one of those Minecraft enchants you're always a little disappointed to get


	9. A Hunter and a Scholar Walk into an Inn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has not-nice things happening with non-monstrous animals.

Trevor was more than fine with Sypha moping. He was bitterly disappointed in her and even a little angry: he had given her so many chances to come out with the truth about the prophecy, basically on a silver platter, but had she taken any of them? Nope.

That, of course, was how he had expected things to go, too, so he shouldn't have had any business being surprised or frustrated. Yet, he just... _Fuck_. He didn't want her to actually _succeed_ at fulfilling his conditions, he just thought he deserved to hear the truth about the prophecy straight from her mouth. It wasn't as if her happiness was rubbing onto him or anything. Neither had their sex talk momentarily gotten him to look forward to having a regular lay for the first time in his life, with the added luxury of not even needing to be diligent about pulling out.

He shook his head, knowing full well that this was the last thing he ought to linger on. Once again, after what must have been his fifth attempt, he tried to concentrate on just surveying his worryingly dark surroundings. Soon after leaving the farm, the road had taken them through patches of forest and now, it was all just plain unbroken woodlands. The sun had already nearly set, yet it seemed unwise to stop - thanks to the unseasonally warm and dry weather they'd been having, they couldn't even risk building a fire here.

'The horses can go on for a while longer, can't they?' he suddenly asked his partner, still scanning the shady forest landscape. 'This place is a fucking tinderbox. If some fire-breathing bastard gets to us, we might go up in smoke with the rest of this mess.'

'They can,' Sypha responded coolly, 'but we do have to stop eventually, even if it has to be in this forest. We will be just as dead if there's a fire and we can't get away from it because the horses are half dead.'

Trevor clicked his tongue – Sypha was right, he reckoned, but still, he didn't like it. What was he to do, then, except keep an eye on the darkening sky? It seemed like a safe good bet that any raiding parties covering sparsely habited areas like this would be flying ones, like the one that had bothered the previous village.

His bet was an unlucky one, unfortunately. After a few minutes of swiveling his head, scanning the sky peeking from between treetops, and hearing nothing but the steady sound of hooves on dirt road and the rattle of wagon wheels, Sypha stratled him by making a sudden noise.

'T–... Trevor!' she called out, then pulled on the reins.

The vampire hunter's eyes darted about while the horses were still coming to a full halt. He quickly spotted the problem without Sypha pointing it out to him: far ahead in the middle of the road, there stood a large dark figure, quadrupedal. At first, Trevor couldn't quite make out what it was due to the distance, but upon realising the creature had three pairs of glowing blue eyes, it came to him.

'Oh for god's sake... you have got to be kidding me,' he sputtered under his breath, supremely exasperated.

'Does it... does it spit fire?' Sypha asked worriedly.

'That thing is what we call: a hellhound!' the vampire hunter answered and gestured at the monster. 'A _hound,_ from _hell._ Take a wild fucking guess!'

Suddenly, the monster decided to live up to its name: it raised its three canine heads, pointed its snouts up to the sky, and bayed in a chorus of high and low howls that gave even Trevor goosebumps. While Sypha tried to calm the horses, which were utterly terrified of the sound, the vampire hunter looked around frantically, searching the woods for signs of movement.

'It's calling for backup!' the vampire hunter warned his partner over the neighing of the horses.

Indeed, the hellhound wasn't alone. One of its single-headed kin jogged towards the wagon from Trevor's side, its empty eyes burning pale blue among the bushes like will-o'-wisps. On Sypha's side, there were two more, one making its way downhill towards the travelers and one only just rising on top of the small hill, its dark silhouette humongous against the diffuse light in the background. Though smaller than the three-headed one, they could have been mistaken for bears from afar.

Trevor would have loved to have been able to discuss a strategy to employ against these things, but he hardly had the time: while the smaller hounds flanked the wagon, the three-headed one began charging right towards it, its three mouths ablaze with orange flames. Before the vampire hunter could say anything, he felt a cold rush of air: Sypha had gotten up and was using wind magic to jump over the twitchy, fidgety horses.

'I'll take care of things in the front!' the magician shouted whilst she was still airborne.

As soon as she landed in front of the horses, she made a hand signal and began erecting a wall of ice around the animals. Trevor's stomach sank at the sight of her standing between the wagon and the dog monster ahead but at this point, all he could do was to hope his partner knew what she was doing.

'Don't die!' he shouted back, not even half-joking, and reached down to his belt to grab the Morning Star.

Just as he was about to take the weapon out and jump down from the wagon, however, he hesitated. His thoughts raced for a split second as he realised: on the road, big blasts could have damaged the wagon, and in the forest, they might have caused a fire. With that in mind, he gave the heirloom chain weapon a pass and reached for his other whip instead. It was time to once again rely on just his knives, his wits, and good old consecrated leather! Finally, the vampire hunter jumped down on the road, ready to whip some mutts.

The first one came from his side of the wagon, lunging at him from some bushed by the roadside. It was fairly quickly dispatched, felled almost as soon as it leapt out, as Trevor's whip missed the creature's head and created a gash on its forechest instead. It was quite enough, as the unholy flesh around the wound boiled, expanded, and burst, spewing bubbling blood across the ground. While the hellhound yelped and collapsed, skidding forwards a little before coming to a halt, Trevor disregarded it and turned towards the sound of the next approaching threat. It was on the other side of the wagon, its presence betrayed by the sound of its heavy breathing and paws kicking up dirt. Trevor tensed and perked up his ears, equally ready to attack and dodge – was the monster going to run around the vehicle or could it perhaps leap over the whole thing to get to him?

Perplexingly, the hellhound did neither of those things. After what seemed like an odd lull, Trevor raised an eyebrow and leaned down a little to take a peek under the tall wagon to see on the other side. At almost the same moment, the monster dog did the same and so, the human and the hellhound were brought face-to-face, separated by only a couple of paces. Perhaps because of the sheer excitement, the beast emitted a short bark and scrambled, then did something incredibly unwise: the creature bowed down, flattening itself against the road, and began hurriedly crawling towards the human.

And so Trevor watched, flabbergasted, as the nearly cow-sized monster, just barely fitting under the wagon, shuffled awkwardly towards him on its elbows, all the while it snarled and snapped its jaws viciously at him.

'How stupid are you?' the hunter asked of the hellhound.

He didn't wait for an answer, just cracked his whip across the monster's face, and with that, the soft tissues around the its skull bulged and popped like a giant cyst. Only one more single-headed hellhound left! And it wasn't as unintelligent as the earlier one, either: while the remains of the hellhound under the wagon grew limp, it ran around the back of the wagon, its claws skittering against the dirt road. Though looking quite witless and clumsy with its bulky body and tongue lolling out of its maw, it actually dodged Trevor's whip with a deft swerve. As if it had taken no detour at all, it just kept running, too, and lunged towards the human, ready to bite and shake him, like a terrier with a rat.

Trevor wasn't interested in becoming a chew toy, however. He rushed to the side and threw a knife at the hound, threatening to poke its eye out. The projectile didn't make contact but that wasn't what the vampire hunter was counting on, either: he was perfectly happy with the monster just being distracted for a moment. He quickly made his way past the creature and by the time the hound was making an effort to turn around to give chase, it was too late: Trevor cracked his whip once more and landed a solid, impactful hit on its bulging dorsal muscles. The withers of the monster burst with a bang and a squelch and as if hit by a giant's hammer, the force of the blast pushed it to the ground, splaying its limbs outwards from underneath it.

There - all three pups gone. And since they hadn't even been magically endowed, no fire either. Sadly, this wasn't the case with the three-headed one that Trevor had left to Sypha: as soon he looked in her direcion, he saw smoke, a _whole lot_ of smoke. Sounds of a violent struggle filled the air as well, as three enraged heads growled and barked frantically in unison, then became quiet one by one. The vampire hunter made haste: he had to run past the wagon, the horses, and the tall ice wall around them to even see what was going on! 

Once he finally got around the wall, his was met with the sight of a bizarre hellscape. In the background, the beginning of a forest fire roared, swiftly climbing up the trunk of a dry spruce and its neighbours, while in the foreground, there was a frozen wasteland. A mirror-like sheen coated the road and a forest of spires, pillars, and blocks of ice jutted out of it. Amidst them there were two beings, neither one of them moving at the moment: it was the Speaker and her enemy, both of them out of breath. 

The three-headed hellhound wasn't just tired, it was trapped. Squeezed from both sides by chunks of ice, with ice spires stabbing its chest and stomach from below, it was trembling with effort to keep a firm foothold on the slippery surface it stood on, without sinking any lower onto the spikes. Having been made to skitter madly across the ice by its nimble prey, spewing fire too much to catch its breath, it could only hang its three heads tiredly, panting, and glowering hatefully at its adversary.

Said adversary glared back at the monster with equal ferocity, also winded. The wild scramble hadn't done her any favours either, as she had some scuffs and bruises from it, but those hardly concerned her: her eyes were squarely on the monster, watching its every move with her hands ready to conjure more ice. She didn't trust the hulking monster to not just smash and melt its way through its restraints once again. As she slowly came to the realisation that this really was it, finally, that she had succeeded, her expression twisted into an incredulous, exhilarated smirk. Between laboured gasps of air, she managed a nervous, sputtering laugh.

'Finally!' she rejoiced in a strained voice as she straightened her back.

She readjusted her hand signals and made a gesture at a cracked chunk of ice nearby. With a bit of a wobble, it took to the air and started changing shape, flattening and curving into a thick blade. It floated gently through the air until it was above the three-headed hound's three necks, at which point Sypha clasped her hands together and raised them behind her head. When she swung her arms in a swift overhead strike, like an executioner with his axe, her hatchet of ice fully severed the middlemost head of the hellhound. Due to the necks fanning out somewhat, the two other heads weren't cut off, but they were useless enough, falling limp like the rest of the creature's body.

With that, the mage could at last dust her hands and just appreciate her handiwork. Or, well, she thought so until her traveling partner made his presence known and reminded her of a certain pressing issue from the sidelines.

'Sypha?' he called out somewhat tensely, then pointed behind her. 'The _fire_?'

The Speaker jolted and spun around on her heels. 'Oh, shoot! I forgot!'

Though the blaze had spread considerably, dealing with it was hardly beyond the magician's capabilities. Though she couldn't contain the flames with her command over fire alone, she tamed them to a point where she could smother them with an intense, highly concentrated blizzard. Once she was done with the fire, what had previously been a smoking inferno was now white with a wind-swept coating of frost several inches thick. Sypha was quite happy with the turnout, it seemed, as when she spun around to face Trevor, she seemed to be glowing, looking a little flushed like she had just taken part in a vigorous bout of harmless exercise.

'Did you have fun?' Trevor asked from her flatly, crossing his arms over his chest.

Yes!' she answered with a bright grin. 'For a moment there, I thought I made a terrible mistake when I started running this thing around. But in the end–'

She would have gone on for who knows how long had she not suddenly remembered: she was supposed to be moping. As if she had bitten her tongue, she winced and shut her mouth, chewing her lip until she averted her gaze from her traveling partner and cleared her throat.

'I mean...' she went on stiffly as she forcibly lowered her hands to her sides. 'It was fine. Everything is fine. As long as the horses haven't died out of fright, that is.'

Trevor snorted and slowly shook his head at his friend. Why had he been so worried over her safety, anyway? She was a beast in her own right.

'Let's just get out of this bloody forest, shall we?' he said.

Thankfully, the geldings were fine, albeit quite shaken. After clearing the road of monster carcasses and ice, the heroes were able to continue their way out of the dense dry forest, soon reaching wide open hills. The travelers were quick to stop and unhitch and give the horses their belated evening meal. With this done, Trevor would have been happy to just lay down and fall asleep, alas, Sypha was adamant: he was going to let her take a look at his hand. Though some part of the vampire hunter told him to rebel, he just... didn't feel like making a fuss anymore. He was too tired. And so, he obediently sat down on the driver's seat of the wagon, letting his friend change his bandages once again. 

'I have seen someone who was dying of an infected wound, you know,' Sypha justified her pushiness. She examined Trevor's wound closely, using light from a small ball of light atop one of her fingers whilst she went on: 'It is _not_ a nice way to go. Very slow and painful.'

'Yeah, yeah...' the vampire hunter responded, sighing. 'I believe you.'

'This is in such an inconvenient place, too...' the magician muttered.

She was about to keep chatting casually but, realising what she was doing, she pursed her lips and frowned. Seeing this, Trevor's brow twitched until he looked away, annoyed by his own disappointment at her not cracking.

'How about your shoulder?' he asked of the Speaker.

'It's fine,' the magician answered without looking up at his face. 'It can wait until tomorrow.'

Once Sypha was done, the two laid down in the wagon and tried to welcome a peaceful slumber for the night. However, fatigued though they were, they both just stared quietly into the darkness on their side of the wagon for a long time. They would have _loved_ to gloat about their win against the hellhounds but... hell if either one was going to admit it.

The next morning, both of the travelers struggled to get up. They were slow to resume their journey onwards, too, but they reckoned it was fine after the long night that they'd had. Also, they were going to reach the next town long before sunset and no matter how early they got there, they weren't going to get back on the road until the next day. 

But still, they didn't just stay loitering in one spot for long. It was still morning when they got going again, driving towards ever higher, gently sloping terrain. Within a couple of hours from that, the travelers' surroundings had changed quite radically from the day before: the forest was far behind and beneath them, now the only trees were the occasional thrifty straggler, able to withstand both the higher elevation and heavy browsing and traffic from goats and sheep. Some flocks of said livestock could at times be seen in the distance but whether their shepherds were present for them, the two heroes couldn't have known - none were close enough to their narrow road for them to see.

Eventually, the travelers came to a road that was wider, more oft traveled, which prompted Trevor to ask Sypha to bring the wagon to a stop. Whilst she looked on with mild curiosity, the man gave the visible length of the road a good gander, following the sight of it as it snaked over and between rolling hills to the left and right. Despite a clear view, there was no sign of what he was looking for: other travelers.

'Well, this is depressing,' Trevor stated, then grumbled, 'When I was here last time, you could constantly see at least one wagonful or donkey train of stuff somewhere behind or in front of you.'

'I guess goods really aren't moving anywhere right now,' Sypha pondered out loud. 'Makes me wonder if Tabla Buţii is looking as empty as this.'

Trevor snorted. 'Oh god, that place with no traffic? Must be a sad sight,' he scoffed.

Sypha urged the geldings to keep going, steering them to the right from the intersection. Ever steeper slopes were ahead and mountains still peaked with winter's snow loomed in that same direction, promising harder work for the geldings. The travelers had to take even more short breaks than usual to make sure they weren't overworked, although the scenery, while mostly beautiful, hardly encouraged them to stop. Signs of travelers did show up eventually, but in the form of a few broken down carts and wagons – at one such vehicle, a few vultures picked lazily at the carcass of a hapless ox that had pulled it. This period of death they were lucky enough to live in was clearly spoiling them.

In the early afternoon, the two finally laid their eyes on the next permanent human settlement. Trevor, once again at the reins, stopped the wagon on top of a gentle but arduously long slope, letting the horses rest and the humans to gaze at the wide valley beyond. Looking to the left, they saw forests crowding the bottom, and looking to the right, they saw farms and vast featureless pasturelands. Between those, there was a small town, watched over by an even smaller fort. The fort stood on higher ground that jutted from the western shoulder of the valley, like a cat perched on a knee, while the town sprawled underneath like a dog resting at its master's feet.

The town and the fort should have garnered most of the travelers' attention, yet their eyes were glued on a river that flowed through the town. It originated somewhere beyond the forests and split the town in two, a side with the fort and a town wall, and a more sparsely inhabited side across the river. For a good while, Trevor and Sypha merely stared at the body of water silently, up until the vampire hunter finally voiced the question that was on both of their minds.

'What the hell is this then?' he asked, in a voice that was equally depressed as it was irate. 'Why is it _red?_ '

Sypha kept squinting in confusion as she asked, 'It's not blood, is it? I mean... it can't be, right?'

The whole visible length of the river was, indeed, red. Or rather, the water ranged from nearly black in the deepest parts followed by deep red that thinned into a rusty orange towards the shallows. Scanning the length of the river up and down, wondering what its discolouration really was caused by, Trevor noticed another thing that was wrong about the picture. The parts of the town should have been joined by a sturdy bridge, alas...

'Great,' the vampire hunter huffed. 'The bridge is out, too!'

The lifeline between the walled an unwalled side of the town had crumbled into the river, leaving only short stumps of it on each side, stopping in midair. This, naturally, raised some concerns, which Sypha was the one to bring up.

'So, wait... how are we going to get across?' she asked, turning to her partner. 'That water doesn't look safe to take a swim in!'

Trevor glanced at her and rubbed the back of his neck with his hand, hesitating. Then, he extended that same hand and pointed, with some reluctance and general displeasure, towards the forest higher in the valley.

'There's a shitty old ford a bit further upstream,' he said. 'That's where you go try your luck there if you can't afford the bridge toll. It's passable only part of the year and a cheeky group of bandits loves to set up shop there every now and again, but... they'll let us pass if we slap them around a bit, I think. Assuming they're even there, or in the mood to give us any trouble.'

'Huh,' Sypha responded. Then, after a brief pause, she looked back at Trevor and slowly broke into a wicked grin. She nudged him with her elbow and said in a cheery voice, 'Well, let's get going, then. Time to investigate!'

The vampire hunter let out a deep, noisy, exasperated sigh. When he was done with that, he asked the horses to pull them downhill, into this cursed valley. The river and the lack of a bridge weren't its only problems, as the travelers were quick to confirm: the farms surrounding the town had been afflicted by fire-starting fiends like the rest of the countryside. Many of the buildings were lacking roofs if they weren't completely totaled and no people were to be seen rebuilding them, indicating abandonment, or at least resignation to not being able to make much use of them for the time being.

It was somewhat unexpected, then, that the roads and the farmyards seemed free of livestock that had been left to their own vices. Their remains weren't dotting the landscape, either, which was both a relief and a cause for confusion, if only a very mild kind. It intensified, however, when the travelers eventually saw what appeared to be five sheep milling about near some barn in the distance. It would have been a mundane sight otherwise, but for whatever reason, the sheep raised their heads and began coming closer, clearly with intent, as soon as they saw the wagon.

'Could they be just... hungry? Even though there's grass everywhere?' Sypha pondered out loud. 'Maybe because it's so dry?'

Just as she said this, the sheep accelerated to a run. The monster hunters glanced at each other, baffled, and when they looked back at the sheep, they sensed that something was very wrong. The sheep were running like mad, with their hornless heads held low, quite as if they were going to ram the travelers. And the sheep _were_ trying to ram them, because when Sypha stopped the wagon and erected an ice wall between the sheep and the vehicle, the animals just... charged right into the wall, head first. Sypha and Trevor watched, astonished, as the now woozy yet undeterred sheep began hobbling around the ice structure, bleating with strained voices.

'What the hell?' Trevor cursed over the noise, which was making the geldings nervous.

Sypha winced and made more ice wall in a hurry so the wayward sheep didn't come any closer. Once she had fully penned the animals in, she turned to Trevor with a startled expression.

'I've _never_ seen anything like this,' she said over the disturbing wailing of the sheep. 'Is there any kind of monster that, I don't know, can transform into a sheep?'

Trevor shook his head. 'I have no bloody idea,' he said, just in case this much wasn't apparent from his wholly clueless expression. 'Let's just... go. Before someone thinks to accuse us of messing with their livestock.'

The travelers left the scene in haste, each shuddering at the hollow cries of the imprisoned livestock fading into the distance. Finished dealing with that horror, they were slotted for the next one almost immediately afterwards: as the wagon rolled past a largely intact barn right next to the road to town, the travelers saw the first glimpses of something that looked to be disturbing before they even realised what they were looking at. When they had it all in view, Sypha brought the geldings to a halt once again, looking at the sight to her and Trevor's right with utter disgust.

'So... this is where the rest of the animals are, huh,' Trevor said, dispassionately panning his gaze across the small fallow field between two farmhouses.

The field was full of carcasses. Just piles and piles of dead animals: sheep, goats, dogs, cats, cows, horses, chickens, crows, vultures, the list went on and on – it was a lurid collection of God's creatures big and small, all rotting in heaps. And these heaps showed signs of deliberate arrangement too, as there was an alleyway of sorts between them, wide enough for a cart to move through.

'They don't look like they were killed by night creatures,' Trevor remarked.

'So what did? People? Why?' Sypha questioned.

Trevor shrugged. Having little else to say, the monster hunters moved on.

It hardly came as a shock, then, when they soon came across another field of dead bodies, this time human. Judging from the presence of shovels and mounds of upturned earth, people had made an effort to bury their dead but had abandoned the idea when they had just kept coming. Though depressing, this at least made sense to the monster hunters.

The sight reminded them of, Greșit, though, so the travelers became wary. How were the survivors going to react to them coming to town? It seemed like they weren't going to come down to open the town gates to the travelers, at least. When they reached firmly shut wooden double doors and, after a bit of hesitation, yelled to get someone's attention, nothing happened. With that, Sypha simply vaulted over the stone wall with wind magic, then opened the gate from the other side. She closed it behind the wagon once more before hurrying to Trevor, wondering out loud what madness and misery they were going to see within the town itself.

To the monster hunters' surprise, though, the place looked almost normal. Some blocks had been overtaken by fire and other damage was evident as well, but compared to Greșit, the place was well off. Around half of the buildings looked livable still, even if they were a bit battered. And while the town seemed eerily empty and quiet and first, Trevor and Sypha soon started to hear a small ruckus raised by children. The travelers caught sight of a gaggle of them bickering and chasing each other in a narrow space between buildings, seeming to be just a bunch of rowdy kids being rowdy kids.

'There must be adults here then, too,' Sypha muttered after breathing a sigh of relief, then returned to scanning her surroundings for signs of life.

Sure enough, a couple blocks away from the children was a middle-aged man coming out the door from a mostly intact building. He stopped to give the passing wagon a good ogle from across the street, to which Sypha responded with a friendly smile and a wave of her hand. That was all she could give him, though, as Trevor quite perplexingly didn't bring the wagon to a stop or even slow it down so she could talk to the man.

'Um... Hello?' Sypha called out to her partner. 'We should stop to ask questions?'

Trevor's response was uncaring, delivered without even glancing at the Speaker. 'We can ask all the questions you want after we've checked ourselves in at an inn, if one survives,' he drawled. 'Or, you can hop off the wagon and snoop around town, then come find me wherever there's ale to be had... Your choice.'

Sypha let out a frustrated noise and threw her hands up in the air. She didn't jump down though, so Trevor assumed her choice was to stick around. When they reached an otherwise empty town square with just a couple of soldiers stopping to gawk at them, the vampire hunter was tempted to ask his partner if she wanted him to stop for these particular gentlemen, what with her being so utterly fond of soldiers and all, but... No, he wasn't feeling that adversarial at the moment.

Instead, Trevor looked at all the intact buildings and asked, in a vaguely appreciative manner, 'A wall, some soldiers, and being in the middle of bloody nowhere really makes a difference against Dracula's hordes, doesn't it?'

Sypha didn't say anything. Up until she and Trevor reached an inn, she was quite mute, and remained that way as she followed the vampire hunter down from the wagon and into the building. 

As was to be expected due to the state of the town, the two weren't greeted by any happy faces inside the establishment. No doubt cozy when it was full of patrons, the place was dead quiet now, empty beyond a haggard-looking middle-aged man and a younger fellow – innkeeper and his son. It seemed that prior to the visitors marching in, both had been doing little more than sitting by a table near a lit fireplace, staring down in gloomy silence.

'Hello there,' Trevor greeted these people casually as soon as they raised their heads to look at him.

Sypha, meanwhile, came in after him and closed the door behind her. As if snapped out of a trance by the sound of the door shutting, the two men in the inn perked up, both of them sitting up straighter. Out of a reflex deeply etched into the spine of anyone who dealt with customers, the older man began to greet Trevor like he did any patron. Just as he opened his mouth, however, Sypha stepped next to her partner and the sight of this quite visibly startled the older man and his son.

'What happened to ye arm?' the gruff innkeeper asked, alarmed.

The travelers were taken by surprise by the question, naturally. Trevor looked at Sypha, who in turn glimpsed at her own torn right sleeve and the bandages on her shoulder, then looked back at the innkeeper.

'I, uh,' she stammered. 'I got scratched by a monster?'

'Cor blimey,' the innkeeper cussed. 'Well it's good nothin' worse happened.'

Sypha and Trevor shared a perplexed sideglance – why was this man being so familiar with them? Or _her_ , rather.

'Anyway,' the innkeeper went on, indifferent to the visitors' confusion, 'you're here to fill the water barrels, yeah? Me wife's waitin' in the back.'

He gestured at the younger man impatiently. 'Go on then, lad,' he told the youngster, 'take the Speaker to the kitchen.'

The travelers shared another, even more perplexed look.

'I'm... I'm not here for that, actually,' Sypha told the innkeeper hesitantly. But then, after a brief pause, she shrugged and stepped closer. 'But, if you need fresh water, then I'm happy to help.'

With that, the magician followed the young man to a corridor past a stairway that led upstairs, leaving Trevor and the innkeeper by their twosome. The innkeeper furrowed his big fuzzy brows as he glowered at his visitor across the room.

'Who are you, then?' he asked.

Finally, a reaction that was familiar and made a lick of sense. In a sarcastic tone, Trevor responded: 'A customer, good sir?'

While the innkeeper drew his head back, seeming baffled, Trevor presented him with the most pressing question he had on his mind.

'What kind of discount are you thinking of offering us?' he asked. 'I could definitely go for a couple of pints for free, at least.'

'What?' the innkeeper spat. He processed Trevor's words with an annoyed expression that grew more annoyed and tired by the second. After a bit of a delay, he let out a deep noisy breath and ran his hand over his face, pinching and stroking his beard before letting his hand fall onto the table.

'Listen, mate,' he said in a gravelly voice. 'We ain't open. We're here just so me wife can cook us some food and... to have some peace 'n' quiet before we all die, I s'pose,' he said.

He paused, seeming a little shocked by the finality of his own words. As soon as he had recovered, he added, 'I don't know what gave you the idea you'd have a jolly good time here, stranger, but you shouldna come to this here town. Monsters come from the river every night, so we all stay at the fort. We cram the women inside with the kids while the rest of us fight to keep the nasty bastards out.'

'Well bugger me,' Trevor cursed, astonished. 'You don't even sell ale?'

'There is no ale, stranger,' the innkeeper enunciated. 'No ale, no wine, no nuthin'. The river's poisoned and it hasn't snowed or rained here in a month, we done drunk everythin' else instead. Don't know where we'd be if it weren't for the Speakers comin' here with their water sorcery.'

Trevor folded his arms and made an irritated noise. No ale? What rotten luck. Whilst he lamented that, though, a bunch of questions buzzed in his mind in the background, mostly regarding the monsters and all the dead animals outside the town walls. Yet, he supposed he was most eager to hear more about these Speakers so he would ask about them, first.

'So... there's a caravan of Speakers in town, is there?' he asked.

The innkeeper made his most frustrated sound thus far and made a gesture in the direction of where Sypha had just gone. 'You got eyes, mate??' he asked irately.

'Oh, no,' Trevor corrected him calmly, 'she's with me.' He explained: 'She was separated from her tribe and I'm taking her back to them. So, what's the name of the tribe you've got here?'

The innkeeper seemed quite stumped by this simple question.

'I... I've no bloody idea,' he admitted. 'They're just the Speakers to us. I don't think they even gave us any name, they just came in an' started healin' people, then made water appear outa thin air.'

Trevor breathed a short sigh. 'Guess we'll find out when we meet them,' he said nonchalantly.

The innkeeper narrowed his eyes at Trevor. Finally, he was becoming a little curious about this unexpected visitor of his.

'Where'd you come from anyway?' he asked.

The vampire hunter pointed his thumb behind his back and answered, 'Through the door.'

The innkeeper scowled at Trevor. With a hint of a smirk, the indignant Belmont heir gave a proper answer only after keeping the older man in suspense for what felt like an appropriate amount of time. Payback for the sass.

'We came from the south, through the woods,' he finally said.

'Feh, no wonder,' the innkeeper hemmed and leaned back in his chair. 'Shoulda come from north or west, they woulda told you the bridge is out. Come to think of it, we ain't heard from Grigore's folk since this whole madness started... They dead down there or what?'

'Almost,' Trevor told him. 'Just thirteen people left barely hanging on in the village proper. It's all empty burnt down farms apart from that.'

' _Christ,_ ' the innkeeper cursed.

He was about to say something more, but he was interrupted by noises coming from the front door. There were sounds of casual chatter, a rattle of the door handle, then a creak of the door as it was opened.

From the bright daylight, a man clad in sky blue stepped in. As was so evident from his robe, he was a Speaker, one whose face was in plain sight as he wasn't hiding it under a hood. To Trevor's disappointment, he thus immediately recognised that this man couldn't have been part of the Codrii Speakers. He didn't have the best memory for faces but surely he would have remembered seeing a dark-skinned man of African descent with a remarkably bushy, silver-flecked beard.

It was hardly of any interest to Trevor, then, who the two other, shorter Speakers with this man were. Whoever they were, they weren't too keen to be seen, as they were wearing their hoods as far over their faces as possible, not to mention that they hid in the shadow of their leader. They even flinched a little when the innkeeper spoke up.

'Welcome, Speakers!' he hollered. 'You're a bit late I'm afraid – one of your kind is already fillin' our barrels.'

The bearded gentleman, in the middle of regarding Trevor who stood closer to him, looked quite baffled. Without lingering on the vampire hunter any longer, he stepped closer to the innkeeper to address him.

'What do you mean?' he inquired in a puzzled but friendly manner. 'The only ones amongst us who know ice magic is myself and–'

Suddenly, as he was gesturing at one of the two shorter Speakers behind him, the man froze. He turned his head to look back at Trevor, knitting his brows as he studied the vampire hunter's face. Just as Trevor had the sense to become uncomfortable under his scrutiny, the man lowered his sceptical gaze, stopping at the Belmont crest on Trevor's chest.

'Oh?' the old Speaker said. Then, seeming to come to some sort of realisation, his eyes widened. 'Oh my goodness!' he exclaimed.

He glanced back at Trevor's face, flashing him a hasty smile, which only made the hunter even more uneasy. The Speaker then returned his attention to the innkeeper, seeming excited.

'Is she still here, the Speaker?' he asked with enthusiasm.

'In the kitchen,' the innkeeper said and pointed into the direction Sypha and the boy had gone.

The Speaker man wasted no time: he beckoned at his kin to follow him and made haste to the corridor where Sypha had been led. Seeing them go, Trevor turned to the innkeeper as well and held up his finger.

'Excuse me,' he told his host, then hurried after the three Speakers.

He got in hearing distance of the kitchen quick enough to hear the first greetings.

'Sypha!' the older Speaker exclaimed happily.

Sypha proceeded to gasp so loudly, Trevor could easily hear it into the corridor.

' _Uncle Barba!_ ' her voice squealed in absolute delight.

Trevor reached the kitchen door just in time to see his partner jump into the older Speaker's arms. They both laughed, utterly exhilarated, and the taller Speaker man even spun Sypha around like a little girl before putting her back on the ground. As soon as he did that, Sypha gasped again and stepped towards the two other Speakers, who now pulled down their hoods for her.

'Raela, Cedna!' she yelled and rushed to them, enclosing them both in a tight bear hug. 'Oh you sweet things, you have grown so much!'

The bemused vampire hunter grinned as he watched this unfold – how could he not? This was the most wholesomely joyous occasion he had witnessed in a long time. He took a moment to read the room as well, though: in the back, a dowdy woman, looking to be the innkeeper's wife, stood watching the commotion with a bewildered look. Near her was her son, leaning against a table and appearing equally unsure what to do or even think. No ill will there, just awkwardness.

More worrying to Trevor was, in fact, the way this Barba person was looking at him from behind Sypha. He hadn't liked it earlier, either – clearly, this man knew about him, somehow. And sure enough, as soon as the Speaker man could get a word in somewhere between Sypha gushing over his younger kin, he gestured at Trevor and asked:

'Sypha, is this who I think it is?'

Sypha glanced at the older man over her shoulder and, seeing where he was pointing, she was somewhat surprised. Only now realising Trevor was present, she smiled a little bashfully and introduced him.

'I'm not sure who you _think_ he is, but... Uncle: this is Trevor Belmont, of _the_ Belmont family,' she said.

The innkeeper's wife and her son in the back went bug-eyed upon hearing the name. Tellingly, the older Speaker's reaction was the opposite: he grinned, seeming chuffed to bits.

'We and the Sleeping Soldier, Alucard, defeated Dracula,' Sypha continued proudly. Then she turned her attention back to Trevor.

'Trevor,' she began and gestured at the older Speaker, 'this is Uncle Barba, _er..._ Athon Barba, elder of the Păpădie Speakers.'

Trevor looked at Sypha, then back at Athon. The older man walked towards him, brushing slightly against one of the two younger Speakers as he passed them by. Trevor's hackles birstled at the look in his senior's eye as he examined him, making the man appear annoyingly knowing and smug.

'Pleasure to meet you, Belmont,' Athon greeted and offered to shake his hand.

Trevor didn't want to be _terribly_ rude so he took it without much of a delay. Athon raised an eyebrow and a shit-eating grin tugged at the corner of his mouth as he gave his hand a firm squeeze.

'Just so you know, Trevor, this isn't the uncle that went to India,' Sypha interjected from the background.

Athon shook his head with a smile. 'Indeed, even all of us esteemed Elders are merely ”uncles” to this girl,' he said as he let go of the vampire hunter's hand. 'In case you do not also wish to call me that, you are welcome to simply call me Athon.'

Suddenly, the older man's grin turned into a mischievous smirk. 'By the way,' he said, eyes glinting, 'I have heard quite a lot about you from Sypha's grandfather, young Belmont.'

Trevor balked a little. He looked past Athon at Sypha, who was also reeling back, blushing quite furiously too.

'W-wait,' she stammered, 'have you seen my family recently?'

'Yes!' Athon answered gladly and spun around to face Sypha. 'Our paths crossed while we were on our way to this town. They were headed towards Lacul Vulturilor, I believe? And Sileon's group is there as well? What is it about us three, always ending up in the same neighbourhood?'

Sypha fidgeted and cast a nervous look at Trevor. In response, he narrowed his eyes and observed her floundering in minute detail – there was something suspicious about how flustered she was.

'W... Were they well?' Sypha asked stiffly.

'Oh yes, they were all in good spirits,' Athon responded cheerily. Then, in a somewhat wry tone, he added: ' _Especially_ your grandfather.'

Whilst Sypha cringed slightly, the Speaker man turned his attention to the barrels in front of her. 'Are you done drawing water yet, by the way?' he asked.

'Ah!' Sypha exclaimed and turned around. 'Just this one barrel left,' she said and walked to a large barrel that was left unlidded.

'Cedna? Watch carefully,' Athon said and ushered one of the two younger Speakers to get closer.

Sypha stood next to the barrel and made a hand sign, then pointed her hand at the inside of the barrel to fill it with ice. Even when the barrel seemed full, Sypha kept adding more to it, topping the barrel with a cone that extended above where the lid would have been. When she was done, she waved her hand and the ice melted, falling into the barrel with a sloshing sound. Even though all of the ice hadn't fit inside the barrel, no water had fallen on the floor: it was all contained.

'Well, there we go,' Sypha said and dusted off her hands.

'Goodness, so fast and precise, as expected,' Athon commended. 'See Cedna? She compensated for the decrease in volume almost perfectly.'

With that, the young man came to put a lid on the barrel. The innkeeper's wife thanked Sypha for her help, all the while casting cautious glances at Trevor. Athon and Sypha then walked to the door, prompting the vampire hunter to step out of the way. He was about to follow them when he noticed that the two shorter Speakers, hastily pulling their hoods over their heads, hurried after the Speaker man. Trevor pretended to be busy waving to the innkeeper's wife, a little more menacingly than he had meant to, in order to let the Speakers through – he didn't want to get between two nervous girls and their dad.

With that, Trevor followed the younger Speakers at a modest distance, being the last to arrive back at the room where the innkeeper was still sitting. He found Sypha standing there arms akimbo, glowering at him as she waited for him to mosey over.

'You're not staying here, just so you know,' she told him. 'I want you to at least show your face at the caravan and I want you to do it _before_ you're drunk or hung over.'

Trevor raised an eyebrow – she hadn't heard of the miserable alcohol situation yet, had she?

'Fine,' he said with casual scoff anyway. 'Whatever you want, princess.'

Athon snickered at this, as did the innkeeper who was observing this from his table. Trevor smirked at Sypha as she gave them all a suspicious glare, looking vaguely insulted. It was silly as all hell, the Belmont heir knew, but he had to admit he didn't hate this, this feeling of camaraderie between men with significant others.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear I heard the monster mentioned in S3 was at the ”river fort” but apparently it's at the ”river ford.” But, I still wasn't convinced and I was already fond of the idea of there being fort anyway, so... there's both a fort AND a ford. Just playing it safe on that front for absolutely no actual benefit while piling up reasons to suspect absolutely nothing like this town excists anywhere near the Carpathian mountains. Oh well.


	10. The Itch That Shouldn't Be Scratched

Once the handful of Speakers and one Belmont had gotten out of the inn, they climbed onto the heroes' wagon. Athon and his young acolytes sat in the back and Sypha and Trevor sat in the front, with Sypha on the reins and following the older Speaker's directions to his caravan.

'By the way, Sypha,' Athon began as soon as he had the chance to talk about something else. 'What happened to your shoulder?'

Sypha snickered, thinking it funny that she was being asked this again. 'Dracula slashed me with his claws, if you'll believe me,' she responded without looking back at the man.

'Oh. I did not know that the king of vampires went around scratching people like a cat,' the elder said, surprised. 'Well, in any case, you will let me take a look at it when we get to the caravan, will you not?'

Hearing this, Sypha perked up. 'Ah!' she exclaimed, remembering something important. She glanced over her shoulder at Athon and urged him, 'You should start with Trevor! He has a wound in his hand, I have been worried about it getting infected.'

Trevor looked over his shoulder as well, seeing that Athon was furrowing his brows with concern.

'There is no tendon damage, I hope?' he questioned. 'Any damage to tendons is better left to heal on its own, most unfortunately, as even with all the practice I have, I may accidentally cause them to harden.'

'Oh, no, it's just a flesh wound,' Sypha assured him. 'It's not even that big, it's just in a really annoying place, right between his thumb and index finger.'

Athon nodded, seeming satisfied. 'Then I suppose I can heal it just fine.'

Sypha glanced at Trevor, giving him a smirk. 'Uncle knows healing magic,' she explained.

'Which reminds me, Sypha,' Athon interjected, 'have you been practicing?'

Sypha cringed so hard, it made Trevor snort.

'Not much...' she admitted sheepishly. 'I make injuries so much worse when I try, it feels cruel to do it even to animals going to slaughter.'

'Ah, a shame,' Athon lamented. 'Wallachia is in a dire need of healers and we are so few. But, well, do not feel bad: if it is as terrible as you say, healing magic might simply not be for you, much like is the case with Cedna and fire magic and Raela and ice magic.'

'You still can't do it?' Sypha questioned, surprised, and looked over her shoulder at the two younger Speakers.

'They cannot,' Athon spoke in their place. 'Quite silly, I think – it is as if they must be either the exact same or complete polar opposite in all things. I feel it is more confirmation to my theory that one's natural affinity with certain domains of magic is greatly affected by one's perception of oneself.'

At this point, Trevor clicked his tongue and spoke up. 'Hate to interrupt your pleasant talk, but... could we get into what's happened to this town?' he asked. 'Starting with why the river looks like that and apparently smells like the devil's arsehole?'

Sypha looked at where Trevor was pointing with his thumb: at the river. They had a better view of what a mess it was now that they were outside the walls again, having come out of the eastern gate closer to the riverside. The water wasn't thick like blood, just red, but when one looked closely, something like shreds and ribbons of bloody mucus were floating in it. They tumbled and swirled along in the water, getting tangled on stems of pondweeds, and collected in tangled clusters where the stream was slow.

'So that's what that smell is,' Sypha commented as they slowly drove past this sight. 'Smells like faeces and–' she said and paused to sniff the air. 'Grandfather's mosquito repellent? Ew.'

'It is all because of that foul red poison,' Athon stated the obvious.

'Is that what killed all the animals piled outside the town walls?' Trevor asked.

The Speaker elder let out a humourless chortle. 'One could say that, but it is hardly the whole truth,' he said. 'The poison itself does not seem to kill. It causes one to become _mad_.'

Trevor raised an eyebrow. Seeing this, the elder continued, 'Depending on the dose, one must assume, it causes a variety of aches, and pains for a few days to over a week, then starts causing bouts of memory loss. The poisoned become increasingly irritable and unreceptive to reason until no capacity for reason exists, only violent impulses.'

Sypha and Trevor looked at each other. 'That explains the sheep we ran into, I guess,' the vampire hunter said.

'Oh, there are still sheep out there?' Athon questioned, surprised. 'After a little girl was battered and trampled to death out in the pasturelands, the people of this town have killed all animals that have taken to attacking people. Sadly, they have not been able to even use the meat from them, as it seems that the poison permeates the entire body.'

'So, what about the people?' Sypha asked. 'Are they still...?'

'No, the people are fine,' Athon assured, then paused. He shook his head, wearing a forlorn look as he reminisced.

'When we came to this town, it was a complete mess,' he said. 'Nobody knew what to do with their affected loved ones except keep them behind locked doors and hope the monsters did not come to them in the night. Such luck, then, that a simple purging spell is enough to rid the body of this poison and its effects! The only ones I have had trouble with have been in a weakened bodily state, as the purging itself takes a heavy toll even on a healthy body.'

Again, the elder seemed saddened and distant. 'Now, I mostly worry for people downstream,' he spoke sternly. 'I do not think conventional purgatives and emetics remove the poison thoroughly enough. And I fear to even mention bloodletting – draining the body of life itself is the last thing that could possibly help.'

'Alright...' Trevor murmured, ignoring all this medicine talk. 'What's going on _upstream?'_ he asked. 'The poison's coming from somewhere, right?'

'It seems the poison originates at the ford,' Athon answered.

Trevor swiveled his head to look at the elder in surprise. 'The ford, in the woods?' he repeated, just in case he had misheard him say 'fort.'

'Yes, _that_ ford,' Athon confirmed. 'At least, that is where people _think_ the poison comes from. A particular giant toad-like monster has taken recidence there, one that seems to only come out to feast on those who try to cross the ford. According to the people who have survived to speak of its existence, the water upstream from where it hides looks clean, although it is infested with smaller monsters.'

'Hmm, I see,' Trevor said, thinking of various aquatic monsters that might have been the culprits. 'And what are these monsters? The same ones that are attacking the town?'

Athon's face twisted in disgust. 'They are indeed one and the same. They are men who look like fish or fish who look like men, I am not sure which to call them.'

'Mermen,' Trevor determined. 'Are they the fire-breathing kind?'

'There seems to be two kinds, actually,' Athon said, surprised that he would be asked this. 'There are ones with red eyes that spit fire and then there are ones with blue eyes which, appropriately enough, spit water.' He then added hastily, 'You would be wise to avoid going close to the water's edge, by the way – those things hide in the bottom of the river and come out to attack even during the day if the water is disturbed.'

'Okay...' Trevor mumbled whilst raking his stubble with his fingers, thinking. 'Seems like the monsters have a strategy going on here. Destroy the bridge, poison the water, kill all the poor sods who try to cross the river.'

'Yes, and they have seen quite a bit of success in the latter,' Athon said with pity. 'With no walls, no fort, and no soldiers, the other side of the river was a death trap to people stuck there. In the end, they could think of no alternative except to rush through the ford all at once, hoping that the monster can only handle so many of them at once. Almost half of the people were slain.'

'And all the survivors stay in the fort through the night, correct?' Trevor questioned.

'Indeed,' Athon confirmed. 'My people do, too, although sadly we have to leave our animals and wagons behind. Thankfully, the monsters do not seem interested enough in them to cease their assault on the fort for them.'

'Alright then,' the vampire hunter murmured, mostly to himself. 'Seems like the thing to do here is to concentrate on just killing mermen tonight. Since the creature at the ford stays in one place, it sounds like we can probably do something about it even in the morning.'

After saying this, he turned to Sypha. 'How about a bit of a role reversal, Sypha?' he asked. 'I'm curious about how the townsfolk are defending the fort and you don't seem too into soldiers. After we're done saying hello to the rest of your fellow Speakers, how about you stay with them while I go to the fort by myself?'

His partner shrugged. 'Sounds fine to me,' she said.

'Great,' Trevor responded. 'Let's go with that, then.'

As the vampire hunter turned to face the road ahead, Athon smirked and spoke to Sypha in a somewhat smug manner:

'You know Sypha... I always knew there had to be something very special in a man to get your attention, but never would I have guessed that he would have to be _this_ special.'

Both of the monster hunters flinched and tensed. They side-eyed each other briefly, equally annoyed, and after a moment they fixed their gazes on the road ahead.

'Neither would I!' Sypha responded, doing her best to sound amused rather than peeved.

Not long after this, they saw a wide pasture, open apart from two large oak trees. The Speakers' caravan was underneath their thick sprawling branches: it consisted of three wagons, one of which looked almost like a colourful little cabin on wheels. People in blue pottered about around them, doing chores and whatnot, while four mules and two horses grazed nearby. As the unfamiliar wagon came closer to them, the people started dropping their tasks at hand to congregate, curious to see who was coming. Sypha giggled and waved at her fellow Speakers from afar, beaming.

Trevor might have found Sypha's meeting with Athon heartwarming, but that had been nothing compared how tooth-achingly sweet this one was. Athon's people were baffled but overjoyed to see the young magician and they swarmed her as soon as she hopped down from the wagon, smothering her with hugs and questions. They fussed over Sypha like she was a new puppy and she clearly enjoyed every second of it. Trevor didn't even try to deny it: so did he.

As soon as Sypha had been thoroughly greeted, she told Trevor to come down so she could introduce him. Reluctantly, but promptly nevertheless, the vampire hunter went to her side and patiently waited until she was done introducing everybody to him. He counted fifteen Speakers in total – he didn't make any effort to remember their names. The only individuals that particularly stuck out to him were Athon, his calm and graceful wife Stana, and a singular infant thrusted at Sypha, who was also meeting this new person for the first time.

Oh, and then there were Raela and Cedna, too, Trevor guessed. They were Athon's adolescent daughters, like he had suspected, but what he hadn't realised until he'd had a better look was, they were identical twins. Not having seen any before, Trevor actually had to go out of his way to stop himself from staring at them – he didn't want to cause an unfortunate misunderstanding.

In fact, Trevor would have loved to leave altogether as soon as he had met everyone. Alas, Sypha was as stubborn as ever concerning his minuscule injury and so, she had him sit down on a rock so Athon could have a look. Once Trevor stuck his unwrapped hand in front of the elder, it got a close examination while Sypha watched intently, much like the elder and his daughter had observed her ice creation before.

'Hmm. Well, this should be fairly easy,' the older Speaker said. 'Be warned though,' he told Trevor as he raised his gaze to look him in the face, 'your hand will ache and the scar may itch quite a bit after I am done. It should subside in a couple of hours.'

'Alright,' Trevor mumbled, hardly daunted.

The following procedure looked fairly simple: Athon made a hand signal in front of his mouth, muttering something against his fingers until the tips of them began to glow, then he touched Trevor's wound with them. For a moment, the vampire hunter's hand felt warm and tingly, then the whole thing was over. Once Athon took his fingers off the wound, it had closed up, leaving a fresh pale scar surrounded by red skin that felt hot and taut, like when feeling starts to return to hands that have gone numb in freezing weather.

'Whatever you do, do not scratch it,' the elder told him sternly. 'Let it set in peace until the redness fades.'

'Huh. Thank you,' Trevor said while giving his new scar a gander.

With that, the vampire hunter could finally leave. Sypha offered to take him by wagon, but he declined: they hadn't come very far from the town walls and he didn't mind stretching his legs a little. After agreeing on a time to meet up, he just walked off, back the same way they had come.

When he was far enough to do it discreetly, he came _very_ close to scratching his hand. He stopped himself just in time, however, and he took an even closer look at his scar, glaring it with utmost annoyance as he clenched and unclenched his hand. The bugger really did itch! Also, he was starting to feel a dull ache in his wrist that traveled up the bones in his arm. It wasn't terrible, but... it was definitely unpleasant. If a small injury like his was causing this much discomfort, how much worse off was Sypha going to be after her treatment?

She was, in fact, quite a bit worse off. For a few minutes after the procedure, she just sat on the same rock as her partner had and weathered through the pain, doing her best to avoid moving as to not cause more of it. The ache was intense and seemed to come from deep within the bones of her arm, like growing pains made exponentially worse, and it radiated down towards her fingertips, up her neck, even into her chest. There was only one perk to this: she was hurting too much to scratch the hell out of her massively itchy new scars! When the pain began to abate, she had to struggle much more not to succumb to her impulse to do so.

'Danai...' she eventually whined miserably to the young woman who was standing nearby, holding her baby. 'Please distract me – it itches _so much_!'

The woman, Athon's eldest child, chuckled but gave her friend a look of pity. 'I bet it does! The body does not like to be hurried along. But, you have to just grin and bear it,' she told the magician.

Sypha snorted. 'Well look who has become all motherly and such,' she said snidely. 'Having a child really does that to people, huh?'

Danai gave her an affectionate reprimand with a silent stare whilst her baby gurgled. After a bit of hesitation, the young mother spoke in a lowered voice, like she was saying something very naughty, 'Then I suppose you have un-had a child, somehow.'

Sypha chuffed in dismay at this. 'And pray tell, what is that supposed to mean?' she asked.

Danai covered her mouth and tittered, then gave her answer some thought. 'You are much more, hmm... how should I put it?' she pondered out loud while bouncing her child in her arms to keep it from becoming fussy. 'Not-serious. Playful, I suppose. And you have become a bit of a bully it seems – I do not remember you ever taking so much pleasure in teasing anyone, not even Arn.'

Sypha winced at that last remark, then smiled sheepishly. 'Well, I can't lie: picking on Trevor has become one of my favourite pastimes,' she admitted.

Danai gave her a look of doubtful surprise. Her realisation of how earnest the magician was being made her let out an abrupt burst of laughter.

'Is _that_ what it took for you to fall for a man, Sypha?' she asked incredulously. 'Him taking well to being teased?'

'Pft!' Sypha spat and, weakly, made a dismissive gesture in her peer's direction. But then, as she began denying this accusation in actual human words, she suddenly halted and had an abrupt moment of intense self-reflection. 'Oh no... _was it?_ ' she asked of herself quietly, much to Danai's concern. After a moment's silence, the magician pulled herself back together and shook her head.

'I... don't know,' she eventually responded with a shrug, then winced at her still aching and itching shoulder. 'Maybe? I have discovered stranger things about myself during this weird journey.'

'Oh. Such as?' Danai questioned curiously.

Sypha opened her mouth before she had another mortifying realisation: the only examples she could think of was either awfully _warlike_ , as many of her fellow Speakers liked to say, or otherwise unwholesome, or simply too embarrassing for her to say out loud.

'I, uhhh,' the magician stammered, trying desperately to think of something that was only somewhat deviant to a Speaker. Finally, she blurted out, 'I, I like meat!' She kept blathering, 'It, er, didn't agree with my stomach at first but I decided for the sake of convenience that I was going to eat the same food as Trevor and Alucard. And now, I... quite like it.'

'Really?' Danai responded, astonished and only slightly judgmental. Far less so than if Sypha had told her that, say, thinking of new creative ways to kill things was fun to her.

'Really,' Sypha breathed out, relieved. 'But, enough about me already,' she said, fervently intent on changing the subject. 'How about you? How has motherhood treated you, otherwise?'

She was genuinely interested in hearing about this but unfortunately, just as the young mother had begun speaking, Stana came up to her juniors and cut their conversation short.

'Sypha?' the poised older woman called out in a friendly tone. 'I hate to interrupt, but my husband is asking for you. He's waiting for you in the house wagon.'

Sypha would have rather kept talking to Danai, but... She supposed that would have to wait.

'Oh, and I would like to take your robe now,' Stana added. 'I do so wish we had a whole spare one for you but I had to recently repurpose our only one to fix others. There's enough fabric left of it for a new sleeve, luckily.'

'No, it's fine Auntie, thank you,' Sypha thanked the older woman as she stood up. 'Just getting a sleeve is much more than I could have asked for. And I am quite attached to my own robe, so I am glad it can still be fixed.'

After handing her torn garment to Stana, Sypha excused herself from her and Danai's company. She hobbled to her fellow Speakers' handsome house on wheels, complete with a rounded roof, tiny windows, and a movable set of stairs up to the door. Upon climbing up and taking a peek inside, Sypha found the elder sitting cross-legged in the back of the wagon, a steady stream of smoke rising out of a bowl next to him.

'Ah, Sypha,' he said and gestured at the younger Speaker to come in. 'Please, do sit with me. I cannot do much about the itching or the aching, but this calming incence should help you relax, at least.'

Sypha narrowed her eyes a little. She had a fairly good guess as to where this was leading.

'Sure. Thank you,' she said with cheer anyway, then stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

'Did Stana take your robe?' the man asked as she sat down on the floor in front of him, mirroring his posture.

'Yes. I appreciate it, it was quite annoying to have just one sleeve,' Sypha said as she settled down comfortably.

'Good. It will soon be as good as new! Stana used to be a seamstress, you know,' Athon said.

'Oh,' Sypha said, pleasantly surprised. 'I knew she was an outsider originally, but I didn't know she had a profession.'

'Yes. In any case...' Athon went on, 'I thought that as a distraction, perhaps you would tell me about your journey with the Hunter and the Sleeping Soldier.'

Yep, there it was.

'Why, Uncle,' Sypha began, feigning surprise, 'if I didn't know you any better, I would say that you have isolated me on purpose... so that your people's memory storage isn't contaminated by an unfinished version of a story they are about to receive.'

The elder grimaced sheepishly and stroked his silver-flecked beard. 'It was that obvious, was it?' he chuckled. 'Well, I must admit, it would be a unique learning experience for my daughters to witness the birth of a record, coming as straight from the source as it possibly can. And of course, it would be a great honour for all of us to be the first ones to receive our old legend made real.'

Sypha let out an amused huff and shrugged with one shoulder. 'Well, neither Grandfather or Arn would be too bothered, I think,' she said. 'As for me, as long as I get to pass the story of our journey on accurately...'

'So you will do it?' Athon questioned.

'If we have the time to go through the entire procedure before Trevor and I are done here, then, sure,' Sypha replied.

The older Speaker clasped his hands in excitement. 'That is _wonderful_ news,' he rejoiced. 'Shall we begin immediately?'

With that, Sypha started telling the story of Dracula's demise, beginning with how she had come to Greşit and, upon seeing the statue of the legendary Sleeping Soldier, realised that she was a scholar, in a sense, and that the land was threatened to be swallowed by a great darkness. Along the way Athon often interjected her with questions like 'How do you know?' and 'Where were you at that time?' and 'Did you see it happen?' This wasn't out of the ordinary – elders were supposed to test the consistency and truthfulness of each story they took in from a living source – yet Sypha had a strange, uneasy feeling about it. It looked to her as if Athon was only interested in asking deep questions about things that _she_ had done. Also, they felt rather judgmental at times.

'Did you truly mean to kill him should he not have obeyed you?' he asked about her threatening Alucard if he didn't step away from Trevor in the catacombs.

'Why did you not stay to shield the people instead?' he asked when she told of her setting out to fight the nightly raids at Greşit.

'Are you sure the castle was fighting against you?' – this was probably the most bizarre one. Athon spent an uncomfortable amount of time seeming intent on convincing her that she'd had no battle against Dracula's castle, that it had simply been heavy and slow to operate. Sypha knew Athon's views on how Speakers ought to be aligned more with Arn's than hers, but this was a bit ridiculous.

She was relieved, then, when she finally got to the end. She was starting to feel a twinge of regret about agreeing to do this, though, and a part of her hoped that she and Trevor could move on before she had to actually commit to it. It didn't seem unlikely – it was starting to sound like getting to a final draft that both she and Athon could stand behind was going to be a long and arduous process.

In any case, Sypha's story stopped at her and Trevor leaving Dracula's castle. By that time her itching had subsided and the ache was barely noticeable, prompting her to trace the four new scars on her shoulder with her fingers. Whilst she did that, Athon stroked his beard quietly, processing the tale he had just been told.

'So, since then, you have simply been traveling?' he asked of his fellow magician.

'Well, we have fought off monsters along the way. But otherwise, yes,' she explained. 'We are going to go find my caravan, then probably keep going towards Brăila, where we think Dracula left a sizeable portion of his forces.'

'And you intend to stay with Belmont, like the Story prophesises?' Athon inquired further.

Sypha nodded, a smile lighting up her face. 'Yes,' she confirmed with full confidence. 'I believe that fighting evil with him and helping restore the good name of us of the old wisdom is the greatest good I can do. It feels like what I was _born_ to do.'

Athon winced a little before managing to stifle this reaction of his. Composure regained, he looked at the younger Speaker with a thoughtful expression for a moment, still stroking his silver-flecked black beard. Then, he smiled and shrugged.

'Well,' he said with just a hint of reluctance, 'what else can I say to that, except good luck on your endeavours? I hope you are successful.'

Sypha's smile turned fixed, forcefully maintained. 'Thank you, Uncle,' she responded politely.

Athon nodded, then slowly stood up and walked to one of the two small windows of the wagon, blocked by a wooden hatch. Upon opening it, golden rays of the much sunken sun streamed into the smoky wooden box, creating swirling shadows on the wall opposite to the window.

'We should start our preparations to leave for the fort,' the elder remarked.

Sypha was about to agree when, suddenly, she remembered something she had meant to say. 'Oh, by the way Uncle,' she began, prompting the man to turn to give her an expectant look.

'This is important,' the young magician assured him, furrowing her brows, 'you see, Trevor doesn't know that the Story foretold us getting together. I would prefer to keep it that way so please... Be mindful of what you say to him.'

Athon seemed surprised. 'Why have you kept that a secret?' he asked, confused. 'Do you think he would try to fight the prophecy?'

Sypha shrugged, shook her head, and sighed. 'Trevor is a stubborn man who prides himself in being free and independent,' she admitted. 'I do not think he would get himself in trouble by forming a tragic obsession with trying to avoid the fulfillment of the prophecy, but... I feel that even if being with me had been his preference all along, he would be driven to self-doubt and posturing. You know, making a grand show of how some old legend isn't the ruler of his heart.'

'Hmm. I see,' Athon said.

'I would rather skip that part,' Sypha confessed. 'And, I would rather make his choice depend on whether he would like to stay with me, not... what he thinks his choice says about the nature of fate and destiny, I guess,' she explained.

Athon chuckled at this. 'Fair enough. I understand,' he told her. 'Rest assured: I will not speak of this to him and I will make sure the others know not to do so either.'

'Thank you,' Sypha said with a smile, a more genuine one this time.

After this, the two finally put out the incense and the candle and stepped out of the wagon into the crisp evening air. It was time to take the mules and the horses indoors for the night.

Those weren't the only animals the Speakers cared for though, as she was surprised to find out. In return for being allowed to utilise the pastureland and being given a space to keep their animals in, Athon's people helped the surrounding farms to take care of their remaining healthy livestock. Though the elder suggested that Sypha leave the geldings to them, she insisted that she do her part as well and so, she joined Stana and the twins in taking care of the mules, the horses, and the few cows they had to share a barn with.

While Stana was inside the barn, the younger Speakers gave the horses a quick brush outside. This, Sypha thought, was a good opportunity to catch up with the twins, who had been rather quiet. They were rather reluctant to speak with her, however, and so her persistent attempts at conversation kept backfiring at her. Rather than give up, though, she kept persistently initiating conversations until finally, having had quite enough, Raela proved that she wasn't the shy, soft-spoken little girl that Sypha had once known. 

'So, why do you still wear our robe anyway?' she asked, quite abruptly.

Sypha flinched and did a double take over the back of the horse she was brushing. 'Sorry, what?' she asked, baffled.

'Raela _don't_ ,' Cedna spat quietly from her horse, whose legs she was brushing.

Raela didn't listen. She reworded her question and spoke to Sypha as if she was a bit slow of wit, 'You are not a Speaker anymore, so why do you wear our robe?'

Sypha balked. 'I, uh, _oof_ ,' she breathed out, running her fingers through her hair. That had been quite the gut punch, she had to admit.

'Raela!' Cedna yelled and stood up straight just to glare at her sister over the back of her horse.

'What!' Raela yelled back, looking back at her twin. 'You were wondering about it too just before!'

Cedna hissed and growled at her sister, outraged at the betrayal, 'Well I wouldn't have if I had known you would tattle like this, would I!'

' _Girls,_ ' Sypha scolded sternly, but calmly, 'Do not shout and flail around horses.'

As soon as she had done this, Cedna suddenly abandoned her task, throwing her brush on the ground. Sypha looked on with dismay as the supposedly icier of the two twins just stomped away in a huff, without saying a word. Shaking her head, the magician let the girl go indoors to her mother and turned to Raela instead.

'Also,' she enunciated to the remaining girl, 'just so we are clear on this: I am still a Speaker, even if I'm not traveling with my group.'

Raela spoke up without missing a beat. 'Father doesn't think so,' she said matter-of-factly. 'He said you should give up the robe already.'

The magician went a bit bug-eyed for a moment. Athon had really said that, had he?

'That's unfortunate,' Sypha said with deliberation as soon as she had her full poise, 'but it doesn't really matter what Uncle thinks about this. He has no say in who is part of the Codrii Speakers.'

'Well Father said that times have changed. He said that Speakers have to change with them,' Raela asserted.

'And I agree with that notion,' Sypha said promptly. Then, with an incredulous, humourless laugh she added to that, 'Even though I _really_ don't like what you seem to be implying with it in this context.'

The younger Speaker was about to say something but her senior spoke over her.

'What I mean is, thanks to the lack of night creatures, we have managed to get by with fewer of us who can vanquish evil, but at least for now, those days are gone,' she lectured. 'We have to once again do whatever we can to stop monsters from killing people. Those of us who can heal, heal, and those of us who can–'

 _'Raela?'_ a concerned voice suddenly called from inside the barn.

It was Stana, coming out in a hurry. Sypha didn't even have a chance to finish her sentence before the older woman stepped to Raela and grabbed her wrist.

'Excuse us,' Stana apologised stiffly as she began dragging her daughter away. Where they were headed, Sypha had no idea.

Not knowing what else to do, the magician just shrugged and kept brushing the horse. After about five minutes, she had help again, in the form of Danai who hurried to her from the direction Stana and Raela had gone off to.

'I am _ever_ so sorry about this, Sypha,' she said, embarrassed, when she reached her fellow Speaker. 'Raela is just at that age, you know?' she said as she picked up the brush Cedna had thrown down. 'When she isn't demanding to be left alone, she is looking for a fight. I hope she grows out of it soon.'

Sypha chewed at the inside of her cheek for a moment, very tempted to say something about how she thought the problem wasn't really Raela.

'It's... it's fine,' she said instead and kept brushing.

Unfortunately, no amount or differently worded iterations of this expression kept Danai from fussing. She blathered somewhat nervously throughout the caring of the horses and seemed intent on keeping it going as long as possible. It started to become plenty evident to Sypha that her friend and sister was stalling so that they would be a little bit behind from the others. As they finally began their walk to the fort, she realised why: Athon and Raela were walking far ahead on the dirt road to town: a thorough scolding and a possibly quite loud argument was taking place between them.

Well, Athon wasn't the only one who could play this game. Out of all people he could have left to isolate and distract her, he probably shouldn't have chosen Danai! Unlike with most other members of Athon's group, Sypha was actually comfortable twisting her peer's arm a little to get answers. With that in mind, she directed their conversation to someone in particular, based on a hunch.

'So how was my dearest brother, anyway?' Sypha asked offhandedly whilst walking alongside the young woman. 'Was he more relaxed now that I'm not constantly getting on his nerves?'

Danai huffed and gave her a disapproving look. 'But you _are_ getting on his nerves, by making him worry,' she said. 'Poor Arn – I suppose he hadn't the time to speak to Belmont much? He seemed convinced that this man will have a bad influence on you. Make you more barbarous or somesuch.'

Sypha made a face. 'Really?' she responded, feigning bemusement. 'Ha, well, wouldn't that be something!'

There were some more things she would have liked to have heard about her brother's audacity, but she relented, preferring to get around to confirming her hunch sooner rather than later.

'By the way, did he and Grandfather talk about what will happen when I return?' she asked. 'I'm not in trouble, am I?'

'No! Of course not,' Danai answered, then hastily corrected herself: 'That is, they did speak of it and no, you are in no trouble whatsoever. They eagerly wait to hear from you.'

Sypha let out an amused hum whilst trying not to sneer. 'Did Uncle argue with them about this?'

Danai flinched a little. 'They... had a _discussion_ about it,' she replied reluctantly.

Now, Sypha did sneer. 'Was Uncle surprised that Arn didn't take his side?'

Her fellow Speaker shrunk a little. 'Um, well...' she stammered and looked away.

Sypha could see clear as day that she was going to belittle what had happened, a lot.

'Danai...' she said in a scolding tone and gave her a very stern stare. 'Are you thinking of _lying_ to me?'

With that, Danai looked down at her feet with a grievous sort of expression, seeming reluctant to speak. This told Sypha more than any actual answer she would have been inclined to give.

'Wow. So Uncle wants me to stop being a Speaker, huh,' Sypha said, surprised but not shocked.

'No Sypha,' Danai told her and gave her a pleading look. 'Father wants no such thing. He just...'

As her voice tapered off into nothing, her shoulders slumped. Her gaze dropped again.

'He would rather not have you be our face to the outsiders,' she said quietly. She lamented, 'We have done so much to cultivate a reputation of us Speakers as people of peace, who do not fight, only heal, and who do not possess value in struggles between men. We only wish to preserve stories and help the commonfolk in peace, without having to fear witch hunts or forceful attempts to recruit us as tools for war.'

Sypha's expression hardened. 'Well, you have my sympathies. You really do. Also, I do not want to quarrel about this any more than you do,' she stated. 'But, I do not intend to just quietly take it if you try to make me choose between doing what is blatantly the right thing and wearing the garb and name of my people,' she continued. 'Uncle can come pry my robe off my cold dead body.'

It was only afterwards she had said this that she realised a rather glaring problem with what she had just said.

'Or, well, hum,' she stammered. She made a bashful addition: 'Once he and Auntie return it, that is... hopefully...'

Danai, meanwhile, had gone quiet. Sypha became quiet, too, and so what remained of the walk to the fort was quite uncomfortable. When they came to the last stretch, the steep uphill road leading up to the barbican of the fort, she was relieved, thinking the awkwardness over. Alas, Athon and Raela were waiting for her just outside the gates. The elder urged Danai to go inside and find her husband, who was looking for her, and after she was gone, Athon had Raela apologise to Sypha.

Watching Athon wring out a sufficient apology from his humiliated but staunchly unapologetic daughter, Sypha was hit by an overwhelming wave of second-hand embarrassment for both of them. She had been in Raela's place many times herself and even though she knew discipline was important, she just wanted Athon to stop. Not only was Sypha feeling exactly what Raela was feeling, Athon was aggravating her by not at all addressing what Raela had actually said to her, just that she had said ”something wrong.”

When she had grinned and borne this, the young magician reeled her soul back from the aether it had fled to, then wasted no time in getting away from the father and the daughter. As soon as she had stepped out of the barbican into the somewhat crowded bailey of the fort, she started looking for Trevor, scanning the groups of soldiers and civilians for that familiar messy mane of brown hair. Soon, she caught a glimpse of the red cloth he wore around his waist and saw that he, with his back turned towards her, was conversing with some soldiers near the far wall. Tensing a little in anticipation, Sypha began walking briskly towards him.

Once she reached the men, she opted not to call out to make her presence known to her partner. She didn't want to talk, she wanted to just... be close. She was so, so sick of moping and the few hours they had been separated had somehow felt like _ages_. Thus, she walked up to Trevor from behind and, gently, bumped into him, pressing her forehead against the leather shoulder guard thing that covered his upper back. She felt an impulse to wrap her arms around the man's waist as well but she feared that might have been enough to make the surprisingly skittish lion bolt. What she was currently doing seemed just about what she could get away with and indeed, while Trevor was surprised by her, he wasn't too startled and he didn't move away.

'Excuse me...' the vampire hunter told the soldiers casually, swiveling his head to look over his shoulder, 'I think my partner wants to have a word with me.'

' _No_ ,' Sypha denied against his back. Flatly, she muttered: 'Just point me to the monsters and I will use violence on all of them.'

'What did she say?' one of the soldiers asked quietly from another. When his brother in arms repeated Sypha's words to him, they both snickered.

'Something wrong, Sypha?' Trevor asked in the meantime. 'Are the other Speakers bullying you?'

'Yes,' Sypha responded in deadpan.

There was a heavy pause. Since the mage didn't elaborate, the Belmont heir spoke out instead.

'I was just joking, but... Okay,' he said.

Sypha sighed, letting her shoulders slump. There was no use making this _his_ problem too, she supposed. Not at the moment, anyway.

'Raela and Cedna have become cantankerous, brutally honest adolescents, that's all,' she said wearily and abandoned the man's support, standing up straight and folding her arms.

'Anyway,' she said, 'what's the strategy for tonight?'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, uh. I didn't have a lot to go by when it came to Speaker names, right? Thus far Netflixvania has a Sypha Belnades and an Arn, plus an apparent tendency to hail from somewhere around the Iberian Peninsula – that's it. Sypha is derived from a word with Arabic origins, Belnades is Fernandez spelled weird, and Arn seems to be a rather Germanic name for a fellow who sounds delightfully Andalusian.
> 
> Anyway, I kind of struggled with this issue and went through names for my fake Speakers like toilet paper, feeling like they just weren't something a Japanese game developer outside the staff of Fire Emblem would ever name their vaguely European characters. Hitting that certain note between basic, fancy, and wonky just helps make things feel more Castlevania-ey to me you know? So, well, eventually I settled on first names that are of vaguely Greek influence (Stana is a notable exception due to not having been born a Speaker) and Barba for a surname because not only is it literally just ”beard” in several Romance languages, it can also mean ”uncle.” A bit on the nose for Athon, sure.
> 
> Also, about the healing magic: Netflixvania doesn't make it very clear what can and can't be done with magic or how difficult different kinds of magic are to learn, but I was still iffy about including it. But, I figured that as long as there's a heavy cost for using it, it doesn't break anything.


	11. Boss Music Starts Playing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has more un-nice things happening to animals.

When evening haze enveloped the valley, the calm-seeming waters of the putrid river began to stir. Near the broken bridge, a smooth scaly head like that of a giant catfish bobbed to the surface, the glow of is red sideways-facing eyes reflected off the water. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the head disappeared. Soon another head surfaced, this one with sharper, more angular features. Its more forward-facing eyes glowed blue and quickly took stock of their surroundings before they, too, submerged. The mermen hungered for flesh and were getting impatient, but the sky was clear and their skin, which allowed them to "see" even in murky water, was sensitive to sun's rays: they had to wait until sundown to get out of their preferred element.

When the accursed burning orb finally set, the creatures crowded the riverbank as they began either leaping or simply walking out of the water with their webbed feet. Though the watchtower adjacent to the broken bridge was nearby, the monsters didn't care to be cautious: the humans had long since lost the numbers to defend the town wall. They only had to worry about archers much closer to the fort and even then, the arrows and the quickly healing wounds they left behind were only a danger if they hit the heart, the eyes, or the brain. With that in mind, the mermen didn't care to be particularly stealthy, instead stopping to take a few gasps of air with their oft neglected lungs before they got to the business of climbing the town wall with their claws.

Once they could drop down on the other side, the monsters simply walked through the dark, lifeless town like they owned the place. From afar, one could have almost mistaken them for a loose crowd of miners or such men, heading for a drink at the closest tavern after a long day at work. Having made this commute many times now, the creatures regarded their trip like such an affair as well, with the exception that nobody was talking. Not only did mermen not care to do such a thing, they lacked the parts necessary to do it.

And so, when they walked uphill towards the fort and came across some strange ice structures, like booths, on both sides of the road, they didn't speculate amongst themselves what they could have been. They just looked to their sides, a little puzzled, and moved on. Hardly having expected an ambush, they were quite taken by surprise when a human suddenly stepped out from behind one of these ice booths and released a fiery inferno on them. The ones most affected by the fire gargled, shrieked, and scrambled while the ones further away sprung to action: the blue-eyed ones spat water at their burning kin and the red-eyed ones fought fire with fire. 

Their flames met nothing but air and ice, however, as the offending human deflected a couple of fire balls and retreated behind an ice shelter to evade the rest. The mermen gave chase, only for the human to give them a run-around, throwing both ice and fire at them all the while. Then, as soon as the mermen had wised up to the human's tricks, she lobbed one last barrage of fire at them and just... flew away! The monsters tried to knock her down from the air by spitting both fire and water at her but she was too far gone.

Needless to say, things weren't looking too great for the mermen. Out of two dozen of them, about a third were dead or in such poor shape that they were of little use in a fight. The water-spitters had used up a lot of poison water, which they could only carry a limited capacity, which meant that they weren't as able to harass the humans who sought to shoot and stab at mermen climbing up the fort walls.

It seemed awfully convenient, then, that when the monsters came to the fort, they found the front gate wide open. This gave them pause, up until the archers finally made their presence known. Too suspicious of the gate to go for it, the mermen stuck to the tried and true method of climbing the walls instead. Alas, more and more things turned out to be awry: the archers' arrows had been treated in some way that gave them an unfamiliar burning sting as they sunk into the mermens' flesh. Also, the walls of the fort turned out to be covered with a smooth sheet of ice that grew thicker the higher it went, making for a very steep climb with no firm footholds.

Seeing their brethren being shot at left and right, the mermen saw their options dwindle. They had little choice but to try to survive the obvious trap, didn't they? Being that the monsters couldn't speak and didn't bow to a leader, every one of them had to come to this conclusion at their own pace. The first few ones began skulking past the chaos back to the front gate as soon as they saw their kind was about to be turned into pincushions.

Upon hurrying in through the outer gate into the corridor of the barbican, then, these unlucky individuals were the first to see why it was welcoming them in. As soon as they hurried to the entrance, they saw him: a single man wielding a chain whip stood between them and the next gate, which led to the bailey.

'Welcome!' the last living Belmont greeted the mermen. 'Now back to hell with you.'

For the next half hour or so, the fort echoed at irregular intervals with the sound of exploding night creatures. Once no monster stood, an armed group of men exited the fort and went around the walls, stabbing anything even slightly suspicious with pikes. After this, the soldiers and ordinary townsfolk alike started gathering in the bailey, all of them at a little bit of a loss: what now?

'Bloody hell,' one of the returning soldiers cursed. 'Does this mean we can actually get some sleep while it's still dark out?'

Trevor, who had just walked in through the inner gates to the bailey, gave his recommendation: 'Some should stay up and keep watch, but,' he said and shrugged nonchalantly, 'I know I'm going to go and eat something, then hit the hay.'

Having announced his intentions, he turned back around. 'That's it,' the vampire hunter said and raised his hand to bid his farewell. 'That's all I came to tell you. Good night everyone.'

The townsfolk all stared at him as he began walking back the way he had come in. Meanwhile, Sypha landed a wind-assisted leap down from the fort wall into the barbican and began walking towards her partner.

'W-wait!' the soldier who had last spoken called out after the vampire hunter. 'You're leaving?!'

Trevor stopped to look at him over his shoulder.

'Well, I'd rather sleep in our wagon instead of this damn cramped place,' he said with a look of disdain, then pointed his finger ahead of him, towards the barbican. 'Our wagon is on the other side of town so... I'll be there if anyone needs me. My partner is here with the other Speakers, so go to her if more monsters turn up.'

'What?' questioned Sypha, who had just reached him. 'I'm not staying with _them_ ,' she corrected her partner, 'I'm going with you.'

The vampire hunter swiveled his head to give his partner a befuddled look. 'Oh?' he responded, surprised. 'Then,' he said and turned his head again to look at the townsfolk, 'I guess you people will have to send someone to come get us if you get more visitors than you can manage.'

The townsfolk gawked at the monster hunters in shock as they began walking away. 'No worries though, I think!' Trevor assured them without even looking in their direction. 'I don't see why any mermen ready to attack tonight would have stayed behind to attack later.'

Sypha, caring little about the stunned townsfolk since they were now safe, glanced at her partner and stepped closer to his side as they walked on. Quite casually, she slid her arm under his to link them, to which the vampire hunter reacted with bemusement.

'No more sulking, then?' he asked just as the two walked into the echoey barbican.

Sypha gave him a bewildered look before she fully understood what was happening: her partner thought she had managed sulking this long just fine. Not seeing any reason to have him believe anything different, she quickly straightened her act, adopting an air of aloofness.

'I am being _very_ generous here, Trevor,' she told the man haughtily. 'You better be grateful.'

The vampire hunter snorted. 'Okay,' he responded. 'Did something happen with you and the other Speakers?' He added, 'Something more than having to deal with a couple of difficult children.'

Sypha breathed a tired sigh and shrugged.

'Just... the usual,' she answered, looking away. 'Speakers doing their best to not speak of something that is begging to be spoken of.'

'Oh dear,' Trevor responded with a tinge of schadenfreude. 'You're like that even to each other?'

Sypha made a sour face and shook her head. 'Embarrassingly often, yes,' she grumbled. 'In this instance, Uncle has a bone to pick with me but he is neither very good at hiding it or willing to speak of it frankly. As much as I hated the constant arguing with Arn, I hate this more.'

'Ha. I don't like that Barba fellow,' Trevor remarked.

Sypha snickered and, as they walked out of the outermost gate of the fort, raised her head to look up at the sky. Apart from a sliver of purplish red in the west, it was now dark enough for the stars to be out.

'Uncle is a good man,' she told the Belmont heir while gazing at the little dots of light. 'But,' she added, 'he _is_ a little annoying. He takes a little too much joy in leaving people guessing even at the best of times. Also, he is known to be a bit vain for a Speaker, on occasion.'

When Trevor let out a quiet hem, Sypha leaned closer to him and spoke in a lower voice, 'And, just between you and me: Uncle swears he received that gorgeous house wagon of his as a gift for healing an entire village of a plague of some sort, but... everyone knows he peddled his healing magic for money to buy it.'

Trevor chuckled. 'Utterly scandalous,' he commented. Then, after a moment's pause, he asked, 'So what's his problem with you, anyway?'

Sypha groaned in annoyance. 'Ugh... it's complicated,' she said, not intending to say more on that.

Trevor gave her an unhappy look. 'Sypha...' he spoke in a disapproving tone. 'You're doing that thing you just complained about.'

The magician grimaced, rolled her eyes, and thought about how to best summarise the issue.

'Basically...' she began, 'Uncle's ideals are pretty close to those of Arn.' She explained, 'Though he hasn't said so directly, he has never truly approved of Grandfather letting me specialise in elemental magic. And now... again, he hasn't said so directly, but it seems he would prefer I give up the robe altogether.'

'Psh,' Trevor immediately huffed in a scoffing tone, giving her a look like she had just said something ridiculous. 'To hell with that. You got raised into it, it's yours.'

Relief washed over Sypha when she heard this most agreeable response. 'Might this stance of yours have something to do with the fact that you still insist on wearing the Belmont crest?' she inquired.

Trevor clicked his tongue. 'I mean... I _guess._ ' he reluctantly admitted. 'Even if my family came out of their graves and told me to stop wearing it, I'd tell them to piss right off.'

Sypha tittered in surprise while her partner went on, 'I didn't get to choose what I was born and raised into, nobody does. But, bugger me if I'm letting anyone make that decision for me again now, _after_ it's already happened,' he grumbled. 'No takesies-backsies.'

Sypha let out an incredulous chuff. 'Oh, if only I had your ability to keep stubbornly doing things out of sheer spite,' she said with envy.

'God would strike you down in horror if you did, I think,' her partner pointed out. 'You're enough of a devil as it is.'

The magician hemmed. ' _Rude_ ,' she admonished him. 'But, well, God would indeed be right to fear me, I suppose. For one thing, I would use my new power to live for centuries, like Noah.'

She paused for a moment, lamenting briefly the fact that she had to be serious again.

'Anyway...' she began and gave her partner a stern look, which she hoped he saw even though it was so dark. 'Just so we are clear on this, I am not going to just tell Uncle off, and I don't want you to, either,' she told him. 'Uncle is the way he is because he hates confrontation, especially with loved ones. It may cause frustration to me, and sometimes it's outright counterproductive, but it doesn't come from a bad place. Despite my grievances with him, I am fond of Uncle and I know I am dear to him as well.'

'Hmph. If you say so,' the vampire hunter responded.

With that, the two moved onto other topics, like how much fun Trevor had planning and executing something he had always wanted to do as a child: defend an actual fort. Sypha, endeared by his boyish grin as he explained how he came up with his plan, clung closer to him with a smile. Though it hadn't been that long, she wanted to make up for lost time.

Perhaps due to that, Sypha felt jittery in a way she hadn't before, not even after battle. Once she and Trevor had gotten to their wagon, eaten, and settled down for the night, boringly back-to-back and fully clothed as always, the mage found herself unable to sleep. _Really_ unable to sleep. Also, she was plagued by a very specific desire: she desperately wanted to turn around, wrap her arms around her big scary lion, and stroke his mane while murmuring words of begrudging appreciation to him. As payback for the ugly things he had said, she wanted to completely dumbfound and fluster him, just make him squirm for his dear life.

Acknowledging this made the magician frown and grip her corner of the blanket tighter. God... Was Danai right? Was she a bully? Her generally wholesome and kind Speaker peers had certainly made her feel like one, sometimes. Arn had often accused her for having a ”mean streak,” which she had always vehemently denied. After all, she didn't want to be mean, not _too_ mean, anyway. By teasing Trevor, for example, she wanted to, hmm... Indeed, what did she want to happen, exactly?

She did some intense soul searching. Her cheeks burned increasingly hot as she came to a slow, gradual understanding. She craved a feeling like she was arrogantly toying with something powerful, something that could break out of her control and... do something to her. What, though, and did she actually want to reach that point with Trevor? She approached this issue like a mysterious, ominous box she had found, beckoning for someone to open it. Her heart raced and the pit of her stomach tightened as she reached for the lid to lift it, even if only for a little peek...

Sypha shuddered and drew back – she was no Pandora. Then, she despaired: while perhaps not that thing in the box, she did need a little _something_ alright! Otherwise she was never falling asleep! She genuinely felt like she had gone without touch for weeks, even though she had been smothered in hugs and kisses earlier. It was becoming clear to her that she needed to give herself a small allowance.

With that in mind, the magician quietly inched away from Trevor, giving her enough space to roll around. She faced him and scooted back to him, and though she wanted to wrap her arm around him, she merely curled up next to him, with her forehead pressing against his back. Thanks to the man's leather shoulder guard being off, it was quite comfortable this time – this and being comforted by her partner's scent was enough for now, she supposed.

Alas, Trevor immediately tensed under her touch, revealing that he wasn't even remotely asleep. 'Uh, Sypha?' he questioned, concern and suspicion hinted by his tone of voice.

The magician made a frustrated noise. 'Just... let me stay like this?' she asked in a mumble. 'I won't do anything _improper_.'

The vampire hunter was quiet for a moment. Then, reluctantly, he relaxed. 'Alright,' he murmured.

The two fell silent. Sypha squeezed her eyelids shut and gripped her own hand tightly under the covers, doing her utmost to keep herself from acting a fool. She wasn't needy enough to beg – if anyone was going to be that person, it was going to be Trevor. Taking a leaf from his book, she was going to be fine for a few more days, till they reached her caravan, and a few more days even after that if need be. Whatever it took for her wayward beast to come to her instead of her always being the one to come to him for closeness.

And so, out of sheer stubbornness, the mage simply seethed until she fell asleep that night. Even though that was a bit of a struggle, she was actually better off than most people in town: hardly anyone trusted the lull they found themselves in. The men posted on the walls of the fort didn't dare to climb down, fearing that as soon as someone did so, the mermen would return. Meanwhile the townsfolk and the Speakers inside the keep merely discussed going to sleep, each person assuring others that they would stay awake so the rest could relax and lay down.

In the end, most people ended up accepting slumber in the early morning, only a couple of hours away from the time when the mermen usually left them be. When the sun came up, then, most of the town was fast asleep. Few people had animals left to look after and even fewer bothered to tend to their businesses during their regular hours since barely anyone was out and about. The bakers were among the few and even they waited until it was light outside to go tend to their ovens.

While they were unusually late, Trevor was unusually early that morning. He knew that something was off when he woke up and realised he hadn't done so to someone nudging, shaking, or threatening to summon a blizzard – what was going on with Sypha? It wasn't until one of her slow steady breaths hitched a little and made a noise that he realised: she was still asleep next to him. A little surprised, he raised his head off the rolled up blanket he used for a pillow and shifted his position to look over his shoulder.

Yep... There she was. She had moved enough that she wasn't touching him anymore but she was still on her side, facing his back. So now what? He didn't, for some reason, feel like going back to sleep. Should he get back at the Speaker for the past few mornings by giving her a literal rude awakening?

With this in mind, and to look at her without hurting his stiff neck, Trevor rolled on his back, careful not to stir the woman. As soon as he did, he clicked his tongue in annoyance: shit, she looked almost cloyingly angelic. Her face was serene and with a small sunbeam from one of the holes in the side of their wagon cover landing on her odd-coloured hair, she looked like she had a halo. To top this all off, she had an errant strand of said hair dangling in front of her eyes, begging to be gently brushed aside.

Trevor studied the Speaker's face quietly for a moment, then let out a slow, deep, troubled sigh. She would have been pretty happy should she have caught him doing such a thing, wouldn't she? She would have been just about overjoyed to have him reciprocate the kinds of touches she had been indulging in. He could almost imagine her starting to purr had he gone on to pet her. She might have already done so a little bit the day before, in fact, when she had glommed onto him on the way back from the fort. And she would no doubt have gone on to make quite a few other interesting noises as well should he have petted the softest, warmest underbelly of this kitty.

This and the thoughts that followed made his lip curl upwards a little. With Sypha having divulged a little about her sexual history, certain dots were finally connecting in his head and they painted a pretty intriguing picture for him. Sypha had been left feeling a little sore by boys, it seemed... but what about men? Trevor had a feeling that maybe, just maybe, this genius had shown up for practice but had ditched the real event. If that was the case, oh boy, she had quite the surprise waiting for her at some point _._ This delightful thought gave Trevor's resolve a run for its money, for sure.

Battling his inner demons, the vampire hunter forgot all about the punishment he was going to dole to his partner. That was until he managed to stamp down his base urges, which cleared the floor for another one that his body had been keeping from him to get the breeding out of the way first: he had to empty his bladder. Staring past his partner at nothing in particular, sniffling to clear his ever so slightly congested nose, he reckoned revenge was just going to have to wait until he had taken a piss.

Unfortunately for him, after carefully getting up, climbing down from the wagon without making it shake too much, and relieving himself, he returned to his partner's side only to find her already awake.

'You're up early,' she told him, rubbing her left eye with the bottom of her palm whilst she sat on the floor, still half under the covers.

Trevor shrugged. 'My body's getting used to waking up around this time, I guess,' he muttered.

With the Belmont heir's plans for payback thwarted, the two heroes proceeded to just do their usual morning preparations. This included their usual care for their horses, plus a few extras: the other Speakers' animals needed to get out to graze too. It took a couple of trips between the pasture and the barn to get them all moved, but soon enough, the pair could have their own breakfast.

After enjoying their last sesame biscuits with a side of exceedingly salty pork, the heroes made their way towards town, discussing what they were going to do when they reached the fort. Once there, they briefly greeted Athon's people, only some of whom were up and about, and then started tracking down people who had seen the monster at the ford – the hunters needed to know more about their prey.

A single lead that turned to many, splitting the pair up for a while. Later, they met up and climbed up one of the towers of the fort: there, they could share what they had learnt while they had their destination in view. When they reached the top, the travelers turned to look north, past the walls, past all human habitation. There lay the forest, which had claimed much of the valley before it had been cut back again for fuel and building materials for the town. The cover of its canopy swallowed not just much of the red river, but also two roads that followed it on both sides. They all met somewhere under that sprawling green carpet ahead.

'So... we have to _walk_ all the way there,' Sypha spoke unhappily, squinting as she tried to guess how far the river crossing was.

Trevor let out an exasperated sigh and rubbed his neck as he, too, stared into the distance. 'Well, if all the animals in that forest have gone mad like those sheep, the horses have no business being there,' he said. Under his breath, he added, 'Not _our_ horses, anyway.'

Sypha shook her head. 'I'm not going to endanger Uncle's horses or mules either if it's that bad,' she muttered. 'But, if we can't get the wagon through the woods now, can we do it at all?'

Trevor let out an annoyed rumble. 'We'll just... have to figure something out,' he said.

His partner groaned and let her shoulders slump. 'Well, I guess we ought to look on the bright side: at least we don't have to go through all that at night to kill this... toad, frog, whatever this thing is,' she said. 'Although, I'm worried about it not coming out of its hidey hole. I can't do a whole lot about things hiding in deep water.'

'You can't just freeze the water and be done with it?' Trevor questioned.

Sypha shook her head and held her hand close to her chest, moving it up and down a little to sample different heights. 'I can only freeze moving water about this deep,' she said.

The vampire hunter clicked his tongue in disappointment. 'Let's just hope that thing is hungry, then.'

Seeing few alternatives, the travelers decided to just dive in. They informed the townsfolk that they were going to go on a toad hunt, packing themselves a waterskin and some other minor conveniences before they got going. A few people came to escort them to the town gate facing the forest, mostly just to close it after them. As soon as they stepped outside the walls, the heroes were all on their own, feeling a little unprepared as they gazed up the long road ahead.

'I'm not the only one feeling like this trip is going to be utter shite, am I?' Trevor asked his hunting partner.

'Ah, well,' Sypha said, shrugging. 'Maybe the forest isn't that bad for us since we're fighters?'

'I don't know about you but I'm definitely not looking forward to being attacked by wolves and bears, much less _mad_ wolves or bears,' Trevor remarked.

The magician made a dismissive noise and a gesture to go with it. 'What are the chances we will run into something as dangerous as those? The survivors didn't.'

'Yeah,' the Belmont heir agreed in deadpan. 'The _survivors_ didn't.'

Sypha remained unconvinced that there was much to be worried about. The vampire hunter wasn't sure whether to feel vindicated or disappointed, then, when they finally reached the forest after about an hour of walking. As soon as they entered the shade of the wide gnarled trees, something seemed off, and the feeling only got more defined as they went deeper. The air in the woods felt heavy and had a bit of the same smell as the river, not to mention that the two soon realised: everything was unsettlingly quiet. It was spring, yet this nature's cradle of life was completely devoid of birds doing their springtime serenading.

Going onwards, things only got worse. Soon, the travelers started to see what was making the air feel so strange: protected from winds by the dense canopy, a strange miasma hung just over the undergrowth. It floated and swirled around the pair as a sulfurous mist, stinking of the river and obscuring the traveler's surroundings beyond a dozen paces. As if this wasn't enough, the air was thick with small insects as well and they seemed to be vying for any opportunity to fly into one's mouth as soon as one dared to open it.

'It feels so weird,' Sypha began in a low voice as she surveyed her hazy surroundings, then paused: once again, she had to cough and spit out a gnat that had made its way into her throat. 'As I was saying,' she continued in a raspy voice, 'it feels weird to walk through a fog when the air is so dry.'

Trevor was about to comment on this when, just as Sypha perked her ears, she felt a sudden sharp pain in the back of her head. She yelped as she tumbled forward, instinctively reaching for the spot where she was hurt.

'What the shit?' the vampire hunter cussed next to her, taking a step back from her.

Right in the middle of his step, he gasped in surprise, then ducked – Sypha couldn't see what he was trying to dodge, as she was still busy regaining her balance. Once she was steady on her feet again, she glanced around her, also trying to identify what had hit her. She followed the gaze of her astonished partner, who had located it first, and it led her to something perched in a nearby tree.

'Is that an owl?' the magician voiced, bewildered.

As if knowing it was being spoken of, the large bird of prey let out something between a hiss and a screech. It flapped its big rounded wings for balance as it adjusted its grip on the branch beneath, seeming a bit wobbly as it did so.

'There's two of 'em,' Trevor told the magician.

Sypha's eyelids fluttered as she did a double take, refocusing her eyes. Indeed, there was another owl on the neighbouring tree. There was clearly something wrong with it: its feathers were ruffled, its movements were twitchy, and it kept opening and closing its beak – it was panting.

Trevor observed these troubled birds for a moment, then took two throwing knives out of the holsters on the straps of his shoulder guard. Unceremoniously, he threw one, then the other, and with that, both of the owls fell down from the tree, dead or dying.

'Well, not anymore,' he said nonchalantly as he began walking towards where their carcasses had fallen.

Once he had retrieved his weapons and placed them back to their holsters, the vampire hunter returned to his partner, who was kind of dazed, holding her hand over the back of her head.

'You alright?' he asked her. 'Did it get you?'

'Yep,' the Speaker answered. 'It's not a deep wound but, well... head wounds always bleed a lot.'

Trevor snorted. ' _”Maybe it's not so bad,”_ you said,' he mocked. ' _”What are the chances we'll run into something dangerous?”_ you said.'

Sypha shot him a disapproving glare. 'This was hardly a pleasant encounter, but owls aren't _dangerous_ ,' she pointed out.

'Psh,' Trevor said in a scoffing tone, 'alright then.'

As soon as Sypha saw how easily her partner let this go, she knew: he was actually going to be needlessly petty about this. And indeed, from this point onwards, every time the pair was attacked by anything bigger than an insect, Trevor delighted the mage by asking her to rate the dangerousness of said encounter. He had many opportunities to do so too, as they were, among other things, jumped on by a mad hare, badgered by a literal badger, swooped on by crows, and menacingly approached by a small army of angry frogs. Annoying Sypha further, her partner also stopped to poke each critter they killed with his knife. When she asked him what was so interesting about them, his answers were vague at best so eventually, she just stopped asking.

The travelers' progress was pretty slow, mostly thanks to the insects, which grew ever more persistent and invasive. The woodland critters were easy to deal with in comparison, as they weren't endless and at no point did they get anywhere close to flying in the humans' eyes, ears, or nostrils. Trevor was quite relieved, then, when after what felt like an eternity of swatting and coughing and spitting bugs, he caught the sight of old ruins peeking through the miasma: it meant that they were close to their destination.

'Oh, good,' he said as he ended the life of a pesky fly with a smack of his cheek, 'I remember this place: we're almost at the ford.'

Sypha blinked and looked around her, astonished. Running between trees that had sprang up among them, there were crumbling remains of very old stone walls, overtaken by lichen and moss. Cracked, half-collapsed pillars jutted out from the undergrowth as well and lastly, remarkably, the side of the dirt road going past the ruins housed a row of statues. Almost all of them were now in pieces – only a couple of them were intact enough to be recognisable as intricate life-size effigies of people.

'What _is_ this place?' Sypha asked as she walked closer to take a better look at the statues.

'When I said the ford is old, I meant it,' her partner said. 'These are remains of Roman buildings, I guess?'

'Or Dacian, maybe...' Sypha added in a distant voice and turned her attention to an empty spot in the statue row. Only an unoccupied stand remained of whoever had been depicted there.

'I usually like poking around old ruins but this place feels... weird...' she murmured.

Trevor scoffed. 'Could it be the ominous fumes coming from the blood red river?' he asked, then winced and coughed out a couple of gnats. 'Or these fucking insects that just won't leave us alone?' he growled, wiping his mouth into his fist.

Sypha paid her partner no mind. She scanned the ruins through the gap in the statue row, absent-mindedly waving away a large buzzing beetle as she tried to listen to distant sounds. After a moment, she didn't have to rely on her ears: her eyes caught a shadowy figure moving among the trees beyond the ruins.

'Trevor, something's coming,' she warned her partner. 'Looks... human!'

'Human...?' Trevor repeated, confused, and reached for the Morning Star. 'Those bloody bandits – they didn't have the sense to leave?'

As his hand touched the pommel of the Morning Star's handle, he suddenly hesitated, realising that again, his powerful alchemical heirloom might not have been the ideal weapon to use.

'Shit,' he muttered, knitting his brows as he went over his options.

Meanwhile, Sypha stepped back, making a cautious retreat from the statues. 'There's at least four. No, at least five,' she informed her partner.

Trevor looked up and glared angrily in the direction his partner was looking. 'Do they have bows?' he asked.

'I don't think so,' was the answer.

'Let's get out in the open, then,' he told the magician and began walking away from the statues.

The two retreated whilst keeping an eye on their surroundings. Sypha stopped when her partner did, in the middle of the overgrown road, making a hand signal and creating herself an arsenal of floating icicles. The two then listened carefully as their enemies moved through the dry undergrowth that crunched with every step.

The first of them that they saw came out from between the statues and it was just... a woman. A dirty woman with a near toothless grimace, wearing tattered clothes, carrying a short sword in her hand, twitchily raking her dirty cheek with her fingernails like it had a mean itch.

'Hello?' Trevor called out to her. 'Anybody home?'

There was no response. Then, suddenly, things started happening fast: the woman screeched and made a mad dash at the hunters, quick to be followed by seven men. Some of them armed with knives, one with just a thick branch, they swung their weapons all the same, with no forethought, no skill, just rage. Though pressed for time between frenzied attacks, their targets, meanwhile, were far more efficient: Sypha turned her icicles into shields to block attacks and push people down whilst she used ice magic to freeze them to the ground, stopping them in their tracks. The rest had their bowels turned to a steaming flesh slurry by strikes of Trevor's consecrated whip.

Soon enough, the only ones left standing were the two hunters. The only attackers alive at this point were the ones Sypha had frozen to the ground by their feet, only alive because they were unable to pull themselves free. Whilst Trevor stopped to catch his breath after coming close to choking on a fly, he watched his somewhat less winded partner approach their huffing, snarling enemies with a look of worry.

'The fact that my whip made them burst means they've become unholy, Sypha,' the Belmont heir warned her. 'There's no saving them anymore.'

The magician glanced at him over her shoulder, then looked back at the soulless wrecks that were left of the bandits. Having an unhurried gander, she and Trevor both realised that the features of these people had begun to warp: what had looked like spots of dirt on their faces were patches of rough, darkened skin. Also, the teeth of these people weren't just the normal kind of bad, they were being pushed out by a new set of bigger, sharper ones.

Knowing what had to be done, Trevor approached the bandits with his whip in hand. He sent them on their last trip in solemn silence – there were more than enough robbers and plunderers in the world but if these ones had once been the same bandits Trevor had met here long ago, they had been far from the worst kind. Not that this meant that he would mourn them for very long.

'Well, that's that dealt with,' he said casually whilst putting his whip away, having just completed the deed. He looked around himself, making sure everything was in order. 'Time to get going again, I guess,' he told his partner, who stood nearby.

Sypha, feeling a whiplash effect from the sudden change of mood, gave the vampire hunter a baffled look and swept away a spider crawling in her hair, without even realising that that's what it was.

'Why did you use that leather whip instead of the other thing?' she asked of the man. She began walking towards him, approaching him from behind. 'Wouldn't that have been more effective?' she added.

'Yeah, and that's exactly the problem,' Trevor answered whilst looking over his shoulder at her. 'Looking at how fucked up the animals were, I figured that using the Morning Star would make these people go out with a loud bang.'

This answer wasn't sufficient to wipe off Sypha's confused expression. Thus, Trevor elaborated: 'We don't want to alert that toad monster to the fact that we're dangerous, do we? We want it to come out of its hole thinking it's got itself an easy meal.'

Finally, Sypha understood. In fact, she more than understood: she was pleased. She put her hands behind her back and, when she reached her partner's side with mincing steps, she smirked and bumped shoulders with him on purpose, like a cat brushing against a leg.

'What was that for?' Trevor asked.

Sypha looked away as she stood apart from him again. 'I like it when you talk battle tactics and such,' she said wryly. 'It makes you sound so smart.'

' _Sound_ smart, huh,' the vampire hunter sneered.

The Speaker gave him a dirty look. 'I swear Trevor,' she said, peeved but amused, 'every time I try to give you a genuine compliment, you go out of your way to make it sound backhanded. Quite as if you're not used to being praised...'

The Belmont heir hemmed and looked away. 'I don't know what you're talking about. I get _tons_ of praise,' he lied.

The travelers resumed following the dirt road and finally, after just a little more struggling against the onslaught of bugs, they came to the ford. The fact that they had reached the river was evident before they even saw it: by the time the hunters stood at the edge of the water, the wispy yellowish mists had quickly turned into thick fume clouds that slowly rolled in from the river's surface. Dirty orange-yellow in colour, they made the landscape look like it was enveloped in perpetual dusk.

And boy, what a landscape it was. The ford looked like it could have been the mouth of hell: a path comprised of rectangular pale stones, corners worn down by time, cut through water so dark with red poison, the wide shallow spot in the river appeared to be a bottomless lake. The stone path itself looked like it might have been endless as well, as it simply disappeared into the fumes.

' _God_ it stinks,' Sypha complained as she stood near the start of the stone path, gagging a little. She covered her mouth and nose with her hands, not that it helped much.

'And the visibility is absolute shit,' Trevor murmured, looking around him.

With a muffled voice made nasal by her hands pressing on her nose, the magician asked, 'With the water being like that, how are we supposed to tell where that thing has dug its underwater lair?'

'Us not being able to do that is probably all part of the plan,' her partner muttered. Then, after making an annoyed but determined wordless grumble, he said, 'Let's go,' and stepped on the rocky road ahead.

The pair kept their distance from each other, making sure they had the room to attack without harming the other, as they slowly made their way towards the source of the poison. They avoided stepping into water the best they could – since this was a ford, not a dam, water still flowed over the stones where they had sunken into the ground faster than others. The heroes were lucky there had been a drought: normally, this whole stone structure was fully underwater.

Neither Sypha or Trevor thought to feel thankful, however, as they walked silently through the stench, trying to focus on scanning the surface of the water to their left instead of fighting the swarm of insects following them. They managed to be so concentrated on catching even the slightest unusual disturbance, in fact, that when Trevor suddenly stopped to rub his eye furiously, it royally startled his partner walking behind him.

'For fuck's sake with these gnats...!' the vampire hunter growled through gritted teeth.

The magician breathed a sigh of relief. When she turned her attention back at the water, however, she realised she had done so far too soon. To her horror, she had looked at the exact right moment to see a distorted view of a single glowing eye in the dark water, just before the surface of the water bulged and was broken through. This all appeared to happen very slowly, as the flow of time in Sypha's mind had come to a crawl.

Sadly, this didn't make the magician capable of moving any faster. Though she reacted as quickly as she could, she was forced to watch helplessly as the aquatic monster emerged from the foul water right next to her partner with its giant maw open, intending to engulf the man whole. Thus, Trevor's reaction speed was actually amazing in comparison: somehow, even in his distracted, half-blind state, he managed to leap out of the way.

Thanks to that, the toad monster's mouth snapped shut at empty air. It blinked its glowing red eyes as it then lurched, being sucked back towards the depths by gravity and the water in the monster's deep underwater lair, rushing back to where it had been pushed out. Seeking stability, the creature leaned forwards and extended its short stubby arms to take support from the stone path.

Though its front limbs were small, the monster in its entirety was huge. Without stretching itself, it was roughly the size of the heroes' wagon, with enough of it being mouth that it could have easily and quite happily swallowed a whole horse. Though the townsfolk had called it a toad and a frog, its similarity to those animals was hardly obvious: it was as if someone had tried to assemble one of its animal namesakes out of human parts. The monster had flat human-like teeth in its wide grimacing maw, it had skin folds and fat rolls like a pudgy man, and the skin, covered in a thin glistening layer of blood red mucus, looked pallid and doughy. Most disgustingly, the creature's backside was covered in a horrid, bulging mass of oozing pustules – this was the source of all the poisonous mucus. And because of them, the creature hungered: continuously making more of this gunk was hard work.

It was thus quick to reorient itself in order to attack anew. It turned a little using its arms, then took aim at Trevor, who was threatening to get away. By this point, Sypha was ready with her spell: her hands sent a chill the monster's way, making the air between her and it crackle and pop with a sudden extreme temperature change. Yet, the monster was fast enough that it could lock onto Trevor, open its mouth, and launch its long tongue at him. The slimy appendage wrapped around the man's waist and yanked him off his feet.

However, just as the beast was about to pull its uncooperative meal into its mouth, it was forced to realise that this action could have become its last. To its surprise, it had somehow become girdled with ice from its barely extant neck down, anchoring it into the stone path it was taking support from.

Firmly stuck, the monster let out a low, rumbling sound of frustration. It tried to move its ice-encrusted arms, but in vain. It glared at Sypha with one of its side-facing eyes and after a moment's hesitation, the creature let go of Trevor with its tongue: it had to do something about the magician first, before she froze it solid! The monster withdrew the ballistic appendage to take aim and shoot once again, only to realise: it couldn't make its tongue curve enough to its side to hit the magician. Whilst its tongue didn't even hit the stone path but dipped into the water to Sypha's right, past the stone path, the creature kicked with its larger hind limbs, to no avail: the creature was now part of a thick plate of ice attached to the very bottom of the shallow water around its lair. Even worse than that, the mage stopped freezing it and began readying her next attack.

As Sypha was shaping a large sharp blade of ice, her mind finally had the time to actually absorb what ugly abomination she was dealing with. To think that this _thing_ had not only been the last thing seen by so many people, but had nearly taken her partner from her - it made her blood boil! She was going to make a blade twice as large as the one she had killed the dog monster with and use it to split this disgusting thing's head wide open!

And so, stuck in ice, having been made to watch its prey get away, now forced to watch the weapon of its execution take form, the monster was more than well aware of its impending doom. It withdrew its tongue once more and took as deep of a breath as it could in its icy straightjacket. Then, long past its fear of death, it inflicted its last bit of damage on its opponents the last way it still could: by speaking. Its voice was low, hollow, without emotion, and its pronunciation was made slightly unclear by its inhuman maw, but thanks to enunciating words slowly, its speech was perfectly understandable. It stared at Sypha with its red eyes full of dull fury as it vowed:

'I shall hunt and torment your kind as soon as I get back to Hell, Speaker.'

As soon as it had made its promise, its time was up. Seemingly out of nowhere, a spark-emitting hunk of metal appeared in front of its wide-set eyes, then sunk between them. With a vigorous yank, the business end of the Morning Star came out the same way it had gone in, shedding bits of sizzling brain matter. The creature's head swelled, then burst with orange flames and a loud boom, leaving a steaming crater of flesh and bits of jaw bone where the monster's skull had just been.

'Shut the fuck up,' Trevor Belmont growled.

For a moment, Sypha just stared blankly at the resulting carnage. Then, realising she had been shaping her ice blade for nothing, she shot her oblivious partner an annoyed glare. Oh well... As long as the monster was dead, right? Shrugging, she flicked her wrist and melted her weapon into plain water, which fell on the stones below with a splash. After this, she stepped towards Trevor, who squinted at the monster carcass irately.

'Let me have a look at that eye,' the mage demanded whilst beckoning her partner to come closer.

Much to the vampire hunter's discomfort and his partner's annoyance, the spindly insect that had decided to end its life in his eye was impossible to extract in one piece. And, even just getting a good look at said eye was kind of a hassle, too. To help with this, Sypha instructed Trevor to go down on one knee, turn his face up, and stay put. Once he had done this, she hunched over him, doing her best not to cast a shadow over his face, and used clean water from her partner's water skin to flush the fragments of the dead insect out.

Finally, when a gander at Trevor's slightly red and weepy eye confirmed that no more legs were hiding anywhere, Sypha figured she was done. She was just about to tell the man as much and let him go when she, suddenly, hesitated. Still holding his head steady with a hand under his chin, she got lost in a slew of complex emotions. Her noble beast was so reluctantly compliant yet trusting in her grasp – was she not like Androcles, removing a thorn from the fearsome lion's paw? Sypha couldn't help it, she had to take a moment to at least pet Trevor's disheveled mane, sweeping it back with her free hand.

This naturally earned a quizzical look from the vampire hunter, who had been meaning to ask if his partner was done. Instead he met her eyes, recognised her vexed look of longing, and froze. After a couple of heavy heartbeats, his gaze involuntarily shifted, slipped down to the magician's lips. Said lips twitched a little and that was when she raised his chin with her hand to bring light upon his face one more time, then she cast a shadow on it by leaning down. The surrounding hellscape with its horrid stench and its buzzing insects all faded away for a blessed moment – it had no place in the hunters' minds as they ended their frustrating exercise in trust and patience in a slow, tender kiss.

Once everything caught back up to them, Sypha pulled back and stroked the man's stubbly jawline once before she released him from her clutches. Blushing slightly, she averted her gaze, stood up, and straightened herself. When she next extended her hand towards the last Belmont, it was to wordlessly offer to pull him up to his feet.

Dazed, Trevor took a moment to react. Blinking slowly and drawing a sharp breath, he then looked at the woman's open hand and grasped it. She helped him up and the two immediately turned away from each other, both a little overwhelmed by what had just happened. The vampire hunter walked sluggishly back to the carcass of their latest kill, pretending to be fascinated by it, while Sypha looked down at her empty palms, thinking.

Once Trevor had gotten ahold of himself again, he returned to his partner with mundane business in mind.

'We should probably get that ugly bastard out of the river so it stops leaking more of this red shite into the water,' he said unenthusiastically. 'Think you could just... grab it by the ice and drag it out with magic? You were able to throw that big ice column at the Hold, so I figured-...'

Sypha, who stood with her back turned against him, didn't react in any way. She seemed to be holding her hands up near her chest and looking down at them. Whatever it was, it was causing flashes of light.

'Sypha?' Trevor called out with a hint of concern. 'What're you doing?'

She was a bit slow to speak up and when she did, her voice sounded distant, almost dreamy. 'I... think I figured out how we will get the horses here safely,' she said.

Trevor stared at her with a blank expression, wondering which level of doubt and worry was appropriate for this occasion.

'Let's hear it then,' he urged the mage somewhat stiffly.

Finally, Sypha turned around to face him, revealing what she held close to her chest. Between her palms was a tiny but intense, nearly white flame that sputtered and sparked vivaciously, looking like it was thrashing against invisible restraints.

'What if this whole forest and everything in it just... went away?' the Speaker asked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sypha: I have learned over a great deal of time that the only way to defeat a forest... is to BURN it
> 
> Also, I looked and looked, but couldn't find canonical Castlevania enemies that correspond well with the list of monsters Sypha and Trevor rattle off in S3 so I assume they're among things that the writers just made up out of whole cloth? Toad and frog enemies in the game series tend towards pretty boring (tiny angry frogs with tiny angry hitboxes aside), so I scrapped them and googled "creepy toads and frogs." I found myself the turtle frog, a little froggy that tragically looks like it's part human and additionally part human scrotum, and went on from there.
> 
> Mermen, meanwhile, were pretty easy: there's already like a blink-and-you-miss-it merman among Isaac's little army in S3 and it's the firebreathing kind but I wanted more so I added the more gillman-looking mermen there as well, these ones summoned by Hector as indicated by their blue eyes.


	12. Severe Burn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fuck those owls amirite

The row of broken statues at the ruins by the river had seen many forest fires throughout their limbo of over a thousand years, but nothing quite like this one. The flames fed greedily off of the miasma trapped between treetops and the understorey, blazing through the dry forest like it was a flourmill. Another peculiarity unseen before was that no creature of the forest ran from certain death: indifferent towards their own well-being, they merely kept seeking victims unaffected by the river's curse until they were reduced to ash, brittle sooty bones, and globs of charred flesh.

As the cataclysm passed, it left the remaining statues standing among a smoky, blackened landscape dotted by glowing embers. The fire continued burning elsewhere, on both sides of the river, and it seemed like when it was going to be done, there was to be no forest to speak of. This pleased the starter of this fire immensely, as it was exactly what she had meant to happen when she had risen up to the sky through the canopy to throw fireballs far behind her and her partner. Now standing arms akimbo beyond the edge of the forest, she surveyed her handiwork with a smile of accomplishment on her face.

'Well, that's that crazy forest dealt with!' Sypha stated proudly.

Trevor snickered as he stepped behind her. 'I have a feeling your people are going to be a bit unhappy with this,' he warned snidely.

'Eh,' Sypha said and gave him a limp-wristed wave of her hand. 'Worth it.'

The two turned around and resumed walking side-by-side back to town. Despite having endured just the peskiest kinds of troubles this day, they were quite merry, looking forward to having a more substantial meal than their meager breakfast. Also, they were both hankering for a bath, as their hair and clothes had been imbued with the sickening fumes. Trevor had more than just the fumes on him, too, since the toad monster had grabbed him with its tongue: not only had his waist gotten a coating of sticky saliva, his clothes sported several splotches of brownish-red from the water the monster had splashed around.

So unfortunately, the heroes were going to have to bring the stench with them all the way to town. Another bothersome thing lingered in the air between them as well: a slight nervous tension. Though they tried not to, the pair kept mentally revisiting their tender moment at the ford, which had them both feeling flustered and silly. To distract themselves from this, they engaged in their typical banter a bit more deliberately than usual.

'So,' Sypha began, trying to sound casual, 'after we've bathed and washed our clothes... I guess you'll finally have time to sit down and have your ale. Are you looking forward to it?'

Trevor snorted and gave her a somewhat condescending look. 'So you still haven't heard,' he said.

'Heard what?' the Speaker asked innocently.

'There's not a drop of ale left in town, apparently,' Trevor told her with a mirthless, wistful smirk. Faithfully reproducing the accent and the gruff voice, he said, 'In the words of the innkeeper, they _”done drunk everythin'”_ before they got clean water again.'

'Huh,' Sypha responded, visibly a little let down.

Trevor raised an eyebrow at this. 'What are _you_ looking so disappointed for?' he asked. 'Aren't you glad I can't get plastered?'

The magician made an unsure face and shrugged. 'We're not on an urgent mission to find Dracula anymore,' she pointed out. 'Also,' she added, 'as nice as it were if you indeed didn't drink, well... you're a Christian.'

Trevor narrowed his eyes at her in confusion and suspicion, wondering if he ought to be insulted.

'In the words of my grandfather,' Sypha continued and paused, then in turn mimicked Codrii Elder's tone and cadence, 'Christians drink like Speakers speak. If it were possible to wean them from their drink, the church would surely have done it by now.'

Her partner relented and snorted. 'Wise man, that grandfather of yours,' he said with as straight a face as he could muster.

'He is,' Sypha went on matter-of-factly, not detecting his sarcasm, 'and besides, I was hoping you would offer me a sip, just for taste.'

'You haven't even _tasted_ ale before?' Trevor asked incredulously.

'No, I have and I hated it,' the Speaker corrected him. 'But I was, what... sixteen maybe? I have come to like garlic and horseradish since then, so maybe I like ale too now.'

'Okay then,' Trevor said, somewhat impressed by her optimism, 'I'll offer you a whole pint when we get to the next town.'

'Heh, I see right through you, Belmont,' Sypha scoffed and reached out to give his cheek a poke with her finger. 'You're counting on me hating it and leaving it to you, aren't you? Too bad, because I'm going to drink that pint even if I hate it.'

'Shit,' Trevor cussed. 'Well, you got me there.'

The two went and chattered like this much of the way to town, jolly as if they truly were hunters returning home with a great haul. Sypha, especially, felt an excess of playfulness and whimsy which, inconveniently, was plenty palpable even when she explained her people what had happened. Athon, Stana, and the twins, who had come to the fort to investigate why much of the northern sky was darkened by smoke, listened to her story with horrified looks on their faces. Finally, after they had processed the new information in silence for a moment, Raela piped up in dismay.

' _Wait,_ ' she exclaimed sharply, her voice breaking a little, 'so if what you are saying is true, the forest is on fire and all the plants and animals are dying, just because getting past them was a bit of a _bother?'_

Hearing this snapped Stana out of her shock, prompting her to immediately move in and place a calming and commanding hand on her daughter's shoulder. Athon, meanwhile, stepped forward to speak in the girl's stead.

'My daughter speaks too harshly but, she does have a point,' he said reluctantly. 'To extinguish life on such a massive scale goes against everything we have been taught to believe as Speakers. It is also shocking to me that you, as a Speaker of the forest, would burn one down without even asking the people who have been its custodians for generations... are you sure there was no way around this?'

Sypha folded her arms and gave the elder a stern look. 'Uncle,' she said in an admonishing tone, 'all those animals were turning into _night creatures._ What was anyone going to do about them if not kill them, while possibly getting killed themselves in the process? Or were you going to go heal every squirrel and crow and gnat?'

Athon was about to object but then he made a face and stopped short of speaking - he couldn't defend his point as well as he would have hoped. That didn't mean he was fully done, however.

'Could this not have waited, at least, until the forest would be combed through for more people? There could have been others!' he pleaded. 'I may be ill suited for battle, as one might expect from a Speaker, but I can shield myself with defensive magic. Should I have known there were bandits there, I would have already gone to search for them!'

Sypha was about to argue back, but Trevor spoke up first.

'Too late for that,' he stated.

Athon turned to him, a little incredulous that he would be mocked like this. 'Well of course it is!' he cried out and gestured at the smoke in the sky. 'They are all in flames now!'

Trevor clicked his tongue in annoyance. 'Sure, there's that,' he admitted, 'but that's not what I meant.' He clarified, 'What I meant was, it would've been late anyway by now. You couldn't have saved those bandits from this poison... which probably isn't a poison at all, actually. More like a curse in liquid form.'

Seeing the doubt in the Speaker elder's eyes, the vampire hunter reminded him, 'Learning how people turn into monsters and how to avoid turning has been in my family's interests for centuries – I _know_ a thing or two about this.' He went on with an air of expertise, 'Poisons, whether made of plants, or mushrooms, or your grandmother's armpit hair for all I care, don't turn people into night creatures. Not unless your nan's literally from hell, anyway.'

Trevor paused for a moment, glancing at Sypha. It was subtle, but... she did have a bit of an appreciative glint in her eye. Realising that this wasn't the time to bask in it, however, he cleared his throat and returned his attention to Athon.

'In any case,' he continued, 'the rule of thumb with transforming into an unholy being is, once you have started changing shape, you're too late to stop it. Those people we fought? Fucked before we even got to them.'

The Speaker elder, who had regained his composure during this explanation, stroked his beard in contemplation. He seemed to accept what the Belmont had said, yet the look in his eyes was harsh as he spoke up.

'The progress of the symptoms is variable,' he pointed out in a lowered voice. 'There could still have been people in a less advanced stage than the ones you fought.'

'Yeah, and there could have been things further along too,' Trevor countered. 'I don't know what sort of magic you protect yourself with, but can it withstand the attacks of several evil raging bastards at once? What if you were surrounded from all sides, would you even be able to move?' he asked. 'Remember,' he added, 'we're leaving tomorrow so it's not like we would have been there to help you with your wild goose chase.'

Athon flinched. For a moment, he was clearly feeling torn between continuing to defend his position and some other impulse. After some useless frowning at the defiant vampire hunter, the latter won, prompting him to turn to Sypha with an expression and voice of grievous disappointment.

'You are leaving tomorrow already?' he questioned. 'Are you not even going to pass your story on, then? I... very much doubt we will have the time to finish up with it tonight.'

Sypha grimaced. Pretending that this was because of just how mortified she was due to the issue having slipped her mind, she cussed and lamented, 'Oh, bother! I'm so sorry, Uncle, I completely forgot to tell Trevor... But, on the other hand, I did say that I would only do it if we manage to do it before we are done here. Other towns could use our help, after all.'

Hearing this, Athon floundered. But then, laying his eyes on his wife, he appeared to come up with an idea.

'Oh, but, now that I think of it... Stana, didn't you say you still had work to do with Sypha's robe?' he asked.

The woman did a double take. 'I...' she began unsurely. Upon seeing the pleading look in her husband's eyes, she suddenly steeled herself. 'Yes,' she said. She sounded quite embarrassed by her supposed inadequacy as she continued, 'I botched the shoulder seams a little. My eyesight isn't quite what it used to be, I'm afraid – I really should have the brightest daylight when doing anything but the most basic fixes.'

Sypha glowered at the older woman, who chose not to meet her gaze, regarding Trevor with a polite friendly smile instead. Dismayed by this, the young magician looked back at Athon who, too, acted as if nothing was amiss. She was so flummoxed by the sheer nerve of these people that she began to second-guess herself, coming very close to bending to their will – after all, to not give a fellow Speaker the benefit of the doubt seemed like a rude thing to do. Also, one day's delay wasn't _that_ big of a deal, and what if Stana was telling the truth?

But then, the young Speaker glanced at Trevor. He, seeing from the corner of his eye that she had turned her head to look at him, met her gaze with an expression of confusion and disgust: _'Are these people serious_?' he seemed to ask her without words. This bolstered Sypha's confidence – she didn't have to let herself be pushed around by her fellow Speakers just because they were being _nice_ about it! With that decision firmly made, she straightened her back and forced a smile on her face as she turned to the older couple.

'Oh, well, I don't mind as long as there a sleeve!' she said sweetly. Then, in a lower, more serious voice, she added, 'And even if there isn't, it's like Trevor said: _we are leaving tomorrow._ '

Hearing the finality in Sypha's tone, Stana's and Athon's smiles dampened ever so slightly. They only dampened more when, upon giving the younger Speaker a questioning look, she returned them with a stare of strained patience.

In a calm, business-like manner, she stated, 'I will come get my robe in the morning, whatever state it may be in.' Then, after a brief side-eyeing of her partner, she said, 'But now, if you'll excuse us... We are in a dire need of a bath.'

Without waiting for her fellow Speakers' approval, the mage turned around and began walking away, shortly followed by the Belmont heir. The older couple and their two children watched in stunned silence as the hunters went their own way, towards the garrison that was across the bailey of the fort.

As soon as they were out of hearing range, Sypha gave into a momentary rash of self doubt and turned to Trevor, asking, 'I wasn't being unreasonable back there, was I?'

The man was so taken aback by the question, his eyebrows shot up and he guffawed. 'Hell no,' he scoffed. 'You went easy on them, if anything. If they were my people, I would have had a few more choice words to say to them.'

Sypha breathed a sigh of relief and turned her attention back to where they were going. 'I do feel bad for forgetting to tell you about the story business, though,' she murmured.

'What was that even really about?' Trevor asked. 'I thought you already told the elder about the whole Dracula affair.'

His partner clicked her tongue in frustration. 'I did, but... when a Speaker enters a story of their very own into the memory stores, there's this thorough, boring process we have to go through to make sure it deserves to be passed on,' she explained tiredly. 'It's to keep us from just inventing stories and passing them as real.'

Trevor snickered. 'Do you think it works?' he asked.

Much to his amusement, the magician threw her hands up in the air, shrugged, and simply answered, 'Who knows!'

The heroes went around talking to townsfolk, asking for someone who had some barrels, basins, and soap they could use at their house, also some clothes they could borrow until their laundry had dried. To their surprise, they ran to a familiar face doing this: the innkeeper. Hearing of what the pair was looking for, he appeared awkward and hesitant, hemming and hawing.

'Well... we do have those... and you two did help us with the water and those fish bastards...' he mumbled and scratched the side of his head. 'I s'pose you could come by. Me wife can help with the laundry...'

And so, although it seemed that the innkeeper had offered his help rather reluctantly, the heroes took him up on it and soon found themselves back at the inn. While Trevor and Sypha would have been happy to be just left to do their thing and leave, the innkeeper and his wife turned out to be somewhat annoyingly committed to maintaining their little bubble of normalcy amidst all the madness that had been going on. Thus, since the man of the house had invited them over, the heroes were Guests now.

Well, Trevor was, anyway – Sypha was regarded as his wife, more or less, with wifely duties to carry out. Because of this, once the vampire hunter had washed himself in one of the guest rooms and put on the simple ill-fitting clothes that had been provided to him, the innkeeper's wife sent him back downstairs to do absolutely nothing while she and Sypha did the laundry.

Trevor spent the next hour or so just leaning against a table in the kitchen, watching the innkeeper and his son cook. Also, he had to dodge and deflect very personal questions and was made to cringe by the older man speaking of Sypha, a mage who could probably have erased the entire town out of existence, like her partner owned her. Much to the vampire hunter's chagrin, the innkeeper was prone to giving a lot of ”marital advice” of sorts too, most of which would have promptly gotten any man killed should he have made the mistake of applying it to the Speaker magician. The one piece of advice that was safe enough to try was, of course, one that Trevor no longer needed to be told.

'Learn to please a lass with your hands in bed if you haven't already, and get used to the idea of doin' it often,' the older man told him with remarkable ease while assessing the taste of his soup.

Trevor raised an eyebrow. The innkeeper's quiet and meek son, meanwhile, turned bright red and looked away, ears burning.

'You may think it'll never happen to you, young lads never do,' the gruff older man went on, 'but you'll soon know what it's like, just wanting to go on with your day instead of plowin' your wife. Your lass, though, she'll never get any less randy, or less capable of fucking. Bloody nuisance, I tell you.'

Trevor stifled a snicker by biting his cheek. 'Really?' he said, feigning astonishment.

'Aye, and there's always younger blokes with more vigour than sense. Fuckin' bastards,' the innkeeper grumbled.

'Sounds like an awfully inconsiderate bunch,' Trevor remarked, as if he hadn't once known the type on a very personal level. 'I guess I'll have to keep an eye out for them.'

The vampire hunter had to stifle a smug smirk. He had regrets concerning his dealings with women but absolutely none of them were because he felt bad for the husbands. If men couldn't see a problem with treating women like lustful children, who required their constant supervision, only to not even carry out their self-appointed job of caring for their woman-child, then that was absolutely none of his problem, was it? Especially if the sod had insisted on marrying a girl half his age, knowing full well he was going to start going soft with age while she was still full of zest.

Anyway, with gems like these being the highlight of the men's conversation, Sypha was a sight for sore eyes when she finally came downstairs. Not just because Trevor wanted the innkeeper's endless and increasingly personal questions and suggestions to end, either, but also because the garb the Speaker had been given to wear was quite a thing to behold. It was just a simple working woman's getup, a white long-sleeved underdress with a simple straw-coloured overdress, but an odd thing to see on her nevertheless.

'Now what are _you_ wearing?' the thoroughly chuffed and relieved Belmont heir asked when she walked into the kitchen.

Sypha gave the innkeeper's wife a cautious glance which told Trevor that she'd had some trouble on her end as well.

'It's nice, isn't it?' she said politely whilst smoothing the front of the skirt with her hand.

With everything else of importance having been dealt with, the innkeepers and the hunters sat down to eat. Once that was over with, Trevor was overjoyed to remember a reason to not stay for a moment longer than absolutely necessary: he had been asked if he could bring the wagon inside the fort so he and Sypha didn't, you know, ”have to walk as far to have their rest.” With that, the hunters thanked the curmudgeony innkeeper as graciously as they knew how and left.

' _Well,_ ' Sypha breathed out both in relief and disbelief as they began walking toward the Speaker caravan. 'That was something, wasn't it?' she asked.

Trevor cringed. 'I can't wait to get out of this bloody town,' he grumbled.

Sypha cringed as well, then snickered. 'Me neither!' she admitted. 'Did you see how they pretty much stopped talking to me when I was in a dress, like I don't even exist? I'm hardly looking forward to more of that at the fort.'

'Really? I'm more inclined to think you'll only get stared at more,' Trevor commented. 'A non-Speaker girl with such short hair is pretty unusual, after all.'

'Well, that's true also... I guess we'll see soon enough,' the magician pondered and stepped closer to Trevor, to link her arm with his.

Very soon after having begun to walk arm-in-arm like this, the two walked by someone who gave them an ogle and they realised: they looked a whole lot like a husband and wife. With that, the suspense from before made its return, making the hunters feel a little flustered.

'We should... probably walk a bit more briskly so we'll make it to the fort before sundown,' Trevor pointed out stiffly while looking up at the yellow-orange sky.

'We should,' Sypha agreed a little bashfully and let go of his arm.

Trevor couldn't help a bit of an endeared, playful smirk – his partner was being _shy,_ almost? Was the dress making her self-conscious? Whatever might have been the case, it wasn't a terrible look on her.

Anyway, to avoid addressing the tension between them, the heroes engaged in more of their very deliberate banter until they reached the pasturelands. There, they greeted the Speakers, explained the situation tersely, and since the pair had no quarrel with most of the Speakers, they offered to give a lift to however many of them could fit on the wagon. A few took up the offer, among them a couple of the more elderly members of the group but also Danai, her partner, and their baby.

As soon as the geldings pulled the wagon to the dirt road leading from the pasturelands to town, Sypha glanced slyly at Trevor, who raised an eyebrow at her look of mischief. After this, the magician returned to look forward and raised her voice well above the rattling of the wagon wheels.

'So Danai, how was my robe?' she asked casually. 'Think it'll be done by tomorrow?'

Trevor snickered softly and looked away. Danai, meanwhile, scrambled a little in the back of the wagon.

'It, uh,' she stammered. 'I think so, yes!'

The hunters both snorted, quietly enough that their passengers couldn't hear it.

At the fort, they parked their wagon inside the bailey and everyone got off. Athon's people gave the hunters their thanks for the ride before they headed inside the keep, after which Trevor and Sypha cared for their geldings. Once the horses were in their assigned stalls at the stables of the fort, the two stepped back out, seeing that the townsfolk were taking up arms and climbing to their positions on the fort walls. The strategy was the same as the night before and no additional precautions were deemed necessary – even Sypha's ice structures were still intact enough to do their job.

Throughout the preparations, Trevor kept an eye on how people were treating his partner. He couldn't say he noticed a remarkable difference, but... He supposed he wasn't attuned for something like that. He would have to ask her once it was all done.

Whilst he pondered about this, the mage herself walked outside the fort, soon standing behind a little ice barrier of hers once again. She proceeded to watch and wait as the evening got darker and darker, eventually making her wonder if she should just go back. Moments before she actually went and did this, however, she saw them: a gaggle of mermen, a substantially smaller group than the raiding party from before, making its way up the hill towards the fort. And, since the previous attack had left no survivors, they were blissfully ignorant newcomers!

Unsurprisingly to Sypha, she handled them with ease. There were only six mermen in total, a number she could have downed all by herself while stringing them along between ice shelters, but she was feeling a little devious: she left one of them alive and flew back to the fort, wondering what it would do. Much to her delight, the scrappy water-spitter scampered after her and straight through the open gates to the barbican, where Trevor promptly blew it up. Once the night was declared safe and the monster hunters met at the bailey, then, the mage could hardly disguise her glee upon seeing him.

'Did you like my gift?' she chirped as she stepped next to him.

'So you _did_ do that on purpose,' the vampire hunter scoffed.

Sypha said nothing, just smirked and bumped against his side, which made the corner of his mouth twitch with a suppressed grin. Their gazes lingered for a moment before they looked away and began walking back to their wagon.

Some townsfolk, most of whom were getting down from the walls now, were left staring at them after seeing this exchange, their expressions ranging from amused to concerned. How much use were these two going to be should more mermen have come to the fort if they were too busy conceiving the next generation of Belmonts in that wagon of theirs? In the minds of some of the more eager storytellers, a tall tale of them bravely fighting mermen while the hunters were _distracted_ was starting to take form, ready to be repeated long into the future regardless of what actually happened.

And of course, nothing much did happen. Sypha took off her overdress, leaving just the white linen underdress, and that was the most salacious thing to occur that night. The hunters laid down under the covers back-to-back, as was Trevor's preference, after which they gathered their thoughts and had their usual pillow talk in the dark privacy of their wagon.

'So... how did the dress end up treating you, in your opinion?' Trevor asked in a low, rumbling voice.

Sypha snickered. 'It was... interesting. Overall, I think people acted more like I'm not there. And when they looked at me, they did so in a way I'm not used to,' she assessed.

'Oh?' the vampire hunter responded, expecting her to elaborate.

'As a Speaker, I'm always regarded with, well, not _reverence_ , usually, but I am at least a little otherworldly to most people,' she explained. 'People tend to be uncertain and wary around me, whether they respect me or despise my very existence. But in this dress, I feel as if the townsfolk looked at me like just... a strange girl.'

'Huh,' Trevor grunted.

'All in all, this was a fascinating little learning experience, but I'm glad to return to wearing Speaker garb... even if my robe isn't quite as fixed as one might hope,' his partner scoffed.

'I'm sure it is,' Trevor assured. 'Your dear Uncle and Auntie can't bluff for shit. Seems pretty obvious to me they would have been ready to hand it in tonight if it weren't for us not wanting to stay.'

'Hope you're right,' Sypha murmured. 'It's so weird if they did try to deceive us, though. I can't think of a pressing enough reason why they would do so,' the magician went on. 'There's a smidgen of prestige to being the midwife to an important story, so to speak, but it isn't much. And while Uncle can fudge the details of my story a little to make my role look smaller in the version that gets passed down, that's not a lot either.'

Her partner made a quizzical sound and stirred. 'Wait, so,' he began. 'He doesn't want you to be a Speaker and he doesn't want you in your own story... Sypha, those sound like things that a person who hates your guts would do – are you absolutely sure you're _”dear”_ to him?' he asked sceptically.

'He doesn't want me _out_ of my story, Trevor,' the mage corrected him. 'He wants to make it seem like I behaved myself out there. Saved humankind by being _a ”true Speaker.”_ It just so happens that the only way to make it look like that, a lot of what I actually did has to be glossed over.'

'And what were you supposed to do, then?' Trevor asked with a scoff. 'Ask demons summoned from the depths of hell if they could just please stop killing people?'

'I don't know...' Sypha groaned. 'Maybe stay back and shield you and Alucard while you two do all the fighting? Take care of your injuries afterwards?' she suggested.

'That wouldn't have been anywhere near as effective,' the vampire hunter argued.

His partner, who didn't want to debate about this, wasn't even so intimately acquainted with the opposition's view to form a fair defence, rolled her eyes. 'Tell that to him, not me,' she told Trevor.

'Do you want me to, really?' he asked in a facetious tone.

Sypha let out an exasperated sigh. ' _No_ ,' she said firmly, 'please don't. The last thing I want Uncle to think is I don't think his way of doing things has value. Which I think it has, equally as much as mine, it's just that I'm not cut out for it. I was clearly born for something else.'

Hearing those last words, Trevor perked up and emitted a curious hum. 'Is that something you think a lot about, Sypha?' he asked. 'What we're all ”born for.”'

The magician made a contemplative sound. 'I think about it at times, sure,' she admitted. 'We Speakers believe we human beings are at our best when we live with purpose. And, I want to be the best that I can be, make the most of what I can do.'

Trevor furrowed his brows listening to this. Again, this wasn't the kind of fate and destiny talk he was after and digging deeper in that direction went against his decision not to milk the information out of her. And so, somewhat disappointed once more, he just relented and made a quiet, wordless noise, a sign his partner had been heard and understood. He was somewhat surprised, then, when Sypha suddenly began speaking with reluctant, emotion-laden uncertainty.

'You know, I...' she said, then came to a sudden stop.

'Yeah?' Trevor responded, his hopes raised again.

He felt Sypha fidgeting behind him. 'I've... never felt like I'm doing a bad job of being a Speaker or anything,' she prefaced hesitantly. 'But, in the past, I have often wondered if I was born in the wrong place, at the wrong time.'

'What for?' the vampire hunter asked.

'I have just felt like my talents and my interests would have served my people a lot better, say... before the Great Pestilence,' Sypha explained wistfully. 'Back when Speakers were less afraid of being accused of studying the dark arts, when living as a nomad without being able to fight monsters wasn't an option.'

She paused for a moment. Then, quietly, she snickered. 'Not that I hold any grudge for your ancestors for having done away with the things, of course,' she said.

Trevor hemmed, more out of habit than actually feeling his family had been slighted.

'But, in any case,' Sypha continued. She lowered her voice to a point where it almost failed to carry. 'I know it's awful to be glad for a cataclysm that has taken so many lives, but... The truth of the matter is, I'm happier now than I have been in a long time. Maybe happiest since I first learnt magic...'

'Because the legend happened?' Trevor questioned.

'Because I no longer have to justify my existence,' Sypha said. Soon after, she chuckled and added, 'Or, at least I don't have to do that _and_ feel like I'm not making a good case for it. I can point out all the monsters we have killed and if that doesn't do it, I can always point to you. Then I can say, if it weren't for me, this one would be all sad and alone, just drinking and getting to fights all day, and never bathing.'

Now when Trevor hemmed like he and his ancestors had been offended, he meant it. 'I have bathed whenever I've been able,' he grumbled. 'Not my fault you can't take a dip in a lake or a river in winter without freezing to death.'

Sypha snorted and shifted her position, wriggling away from the vampire hunter to give herself enough room to flip herself over. Once she had turned towards him, she pressed her face into his upper back and, apparently, took a sniff of him.

'…You don't smell like yourself,' the magician mumbled, sounding disappointed. 'I don't know what I was expecting – you just took a bath and these aren't even your clothes...'

Trevor very nearly looked over his shoulder to see if she was actually being serious, without considering the fact that he wouldn't have been able to see much in the dark. 'You actually do enjoy my stink, don't you,' he stated incredulously.

'It's a bit mysterious to me too,' Sypha murmured. 'Like those times when you walk into your own fart and find it doesn't smell that bad, actually...'

Caught completely off-guard by this, Trevor sputtered.

'Oh dear,' he groaned once he managed to recover. 'The townsfolk are entirely right to look at you like a strange girl, you know. You're probably the strangest one there ever was.'

And of course, his partner just had to take this as a challenge of sorts.

'In one village our caravan stayed at once, we met a woman who had suddenly started laying eggs as a girl,' Sypha informed him matter-of-factly. 'Several people corroborated the story. They said she was kept under supervision in case she was stuffing the eggs in herself but she was never caught in the act. The last few of the eggs were given to a hen to incubate before they went cold and they hatched into healthy goslings... _Nobody_ in the village kept geese.'

Trevor snorted. 'Okay sure, that is definitely wierder, if true,' he admitted.

Sypha chuckled quietly, after which silence fell into the wagon. Not for very long, though, as the mage still had a question bouncing around in her head.

'Trevor?' she began.

'Mmh?' the vampire hunter responded.

'Do you feel like you're in this world for a purpose?'

The vampire hunter furrowed his brows and lowered his gaze. After a moment's contemplation, he let out a short sigh.

'No...? Nope,' he answered in a somewhat distant voice. 'I was birthed, raised, and trained for a purpose that was always very clear to me, but I understood that that's just something other people decided for me. Not... _fate_ , I guess.'

He went on, 'If, for example, someone had switched me with some other kid in my crib and made me live as the son of an innkeeper, I don't think I would've known any better.'

'Would you have been happy with that, though?' his partner asked. 'Growing up working at an inn?'

Trevor shrugged. 'Who knows. Maybe not,' he said nonchalantly. 'Most people don't do what makes them happy, they do what they have to, or whatever feels the least shitty. If they're lucky, they might just have the time to sit down for a pint when they're done for the day and that's about it. That was my family's lot too, we could just afford better drinks than a peasant.'

Sypha made a pensive, somewhat disappointed sound. 'That's a bit... depressing...' she remarked.

'It is what it is,' Trevor stated, then yawned.

He was going to follow up with something more after the yawn, but... Well, did more need to be said? Not really, it seemed, because Sypha wasn't even prodding him for a better thought out commentary. Instead of speaking up, then, the vampire hunter closed his eyes and began emptying his head, thinking they were finally making an effort to sleep. Before he succeeded, however, Sypha had one more thing to say.

'Trevor?' she called out once again.

'Yeah?' the man responded, a little annoyed.

He could hear the magician's breath hitch as she opened her mouth, then hesitated. After a moment, Trevor could feel and hear her moving behind his back, scratching her head or something. She really did seem to struggle with whatever she was meaning to say.

Finally, she blurted it out as quickly and quietly as she could without risking being asked to repeat herself, sounding a little embarrassed: 'I want you to be happy, alright?'

Trevor opened his eyes and stared into the darkness. The tension he and Sypha had been fighting much of the day fastened its grip on him once again.

'Al... right?' he echoed stiffly, again unsure what more he could have said.

Sypha made some kind of noise, seeming reluctantly accepting of his response. 'Good night,' she then uttered, as if nothing unusual had passed her lips.

Trevor mumbled the same back. He then listened to his partner's quiet breaths for a good while, still staring into empty air. The tension he had spent much of the day trying to escape gripped him once again, making him think back to the tender moment they had shared at the ford. Though he felt like he should have been preoccupied with how he had been kissed by an attractive woman, his heart instead beat heavier thinking about how the magician had looked at him, how she had pet him like a dog, how she had so clearly enjoyed every moment of it. Because she just, very simply, enjoyed touching him. Enjoyed looking at him, talking to him, even smelling him, apparently.

Trevor shut his eyes and swallowed hard. It was about time he admitted it, wasn't it? Things hadn't worked out anything like he had thought they would. He and Sypha were... weirdly good company to each other. He looked forward to when it was just him and her on the road again, even if it involved the occasional spat and sulk. He still had so many stupid monster facts to impress her with, so many stories of hers to hear, so many shitty little things to commiserate over, and daft things to share a laugh about. And they both wanted the other to be well and to be happy.

And so... Well, since his plan to just abandon Sypha hinged on her being content living with her family, he just couldn't go through with it anymore, could he? The Speakers weren't a family like his, where even a single member slipping through the cracks would have been an absurd and keenly felt loss. They were a loose congregation of affectionate, like-minded people, free to drift apart and lose sight of each other, never to find their way back again. Trevor wasn't sure what he was going to do about it, but he knew he couldn't count on these people to keep Sypha from wandering off.

They were going to have to sit down and figure this out together, then. As much as he dreaded it, as much as he hated the fact that Sypha wasn't coming out with the truth about the prophecy by herself, he had to come clean to her, tell her everything. Again, getting to the caravan was his deadline: then, at the very latest, he had to get this done so they could start working on a solution they could both live with. Until then... no more moments like the one at the ford, no more letting Sypha stoke the fire. It was only going to make it harder for him to come out with the truth about his deceit.

With that decided, Trevor let out a tense, shaky breath. He couldn't decide whether he felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders or whether it had been doubled. He still had to decide what he actually wanted from his future so he could better negotiate with Sypha, didn't he? God, what a nightmare for someone who wasn't used to making choices with long-term consequences.

Sadly, living through a nightmare hardly kept a guilty mind from having one whilst sleeping, too. Once his eyelids started to feel heavy after much feverish contemplation over his situation, he closed them one time too many and his remaining thoughts coagulated, making him stumble into a fitful, restless slumber. He had a hectic, unpleasant dream, something about having royally messed up and needing to go get something from upstairs at home, without being seen by his grandfather or the servants. And it wasn't just this one nightmare, either, as when he woke up from that and fell asleep anew, he just got plunged straight into another terrible time.

In the morning, he hardly felt rejuvenated, or looked like it either, as was noted by his partner.

'I had a bad dream...' Trevor grumbled in response, rubbing the crust out of the corners of his eyes. 'I had to climb up some stairs somewhere and I had to do it fast because if I didn't, I'd die... No idea what would have killed me though, I just knew that if I didn't go up in time, I'd drop dead.'

'Oh hey, I've had dreams like that, too,' Sypha chimed in. 'Very stressful, every time. Wonder if they mean anything?'

'I don't know,' Trevor breathed out. 'Wish I knew why all my nightmares have had something to do with stairs, lately...'

Once they had gotten up, the monster hunters fed the geldings and ate a quick breakfast. After this, they intended to go to the inn to collect their clothes, alas... Athon and his eldest daughter approached them at the wagon quietly, their dark complexions drained of blood as if they had seen a ghost. Tensely, they asked Sypha to come aside with them a little, which had the hunters exchange suspicious looks. The magician did comply, however.

Whilst she walked away, her partner watched her for a moment, then felt awkward about just watching the Speakers talk out of earshot. Not having any idea how long this was going to take, he decided to climb back up to the wagon and take out and possibly untangle the geldings' harnesses. Just as he had stepped over the driver's seat and made it halfway to the back of the wagon, however, he suddenly heard Sypha burst out in a short, loud laugh. Not in a good kind of laugh, not at all: it had a cold edge to it that made Trevor tense and anticipate a blast of icy wind. The tone didn't get any warmer when the mage began speaking, either.

' _Great!_ ' she yelled mockingly. 'Just what you wanted, isn't it Uncle!? Congratulations, I guess! No more of this mean, crazy _**witch**_ sullying the garb of _**your people**_ _!'_

What on earth was going on? Trevor was actually getting a little worried for the elder there. He raised his head and stayed very still, trying to hear what Athon was saying in response in a much quieter voice. He had barely gotten started, though, when Sypha piped up again.

'No!' she snapped loudly, 'Keep your precious robes!' She went on with a voice full of venom, 'And forget about preserving my story – since I'm so unwelcome to regard myself as a Speaker, why would I carry out the duties of one?'

Suddenly, her voice started getting louder: she was on her way towards the wagon.

'You can read all about my adventures in the book that I'll write!' she shouted. 'It will contain all the Speaker stories and histories I know and it will be dedicated to _you_ , so everyone who reads it will know who to thank for it!'

It sounded like Athon tried to reason with her at once, to no avail, until his daughter silenced him. Meanwhile Sypha climbed up to the wagon, prompting Trevor to look over his shoulder.

'Right. We're leaving, as soon as possible,' the magician stated sharply as she practically vaulted over the driver's seat.

'Uh, okay?' the vampire hunter said as he spun on his heels. 'What the hell happened?' he asked.

'They destroyed my robe,' Sypha huffed with a kind of bitterness he hadn't heard before. 'Raela sneaked out with it at night and burned it!'

' _What?_ ' Trevor spat in disbelief.

Just as soon as he had said this, the voice of Athon's older daughter called the magician's name from outside.

'Oh great!' Sypha barked. 'Uncle sent you to _handle_ me again, didn't he!' she yelled.

 _'No!'_ the voice responded in dismay, getting closer. 'Sypha please, I am your friend and sister, as I have always been – let's talk about this!'

The magician squeezed past Trevor and grabbed the horses' halters and leads.

'I know you, Danai, and I know what it is to be the elder's child: you are your father's daughter first and foremost!' she retorted.

Just as she turned around to go past Trevor once again, the wagon creaked as Danai climbed up as well. Sypha, clicking her tongue, folded her arms across her chest and tapped her fingers impatiently as she watched and waited for her peer to stand up on the toeboard and lean down to look below the canvas cover.

' _Please,_ Sypha,' the woman pleaded with genuine-feeling desperation. 'Think of Father what you will – I am not happy with him right now either – but consider my mother! She is mortified, she thinks this is all her fault! She is going around as we speak, asking women of this town to help her save what she can of your robe!'

She paused, words fleeing her for a brief moment. When she spoke again, her plea was all the more heartfelt. 'You know how she is when she thinks she has made a huge mistake!' she said. 'Can you not stay just for today, give her a chance to make this up to you?'

Trevor raised an eyebrow and looked at his partner, doing so just in time to witness her face fall and tense shoulders lower. He knew the expression she wore so well it hurt – that annoyance, mixed with sympathy and guilt, topped by anger towards people for making one care about them, not to mention disappointment at one's own resolve not to care. He had felt all that so many times before.

Aware of how shit this all felt, he very nearly reached out and placed his hand on his partner's shoulder, yet... he didn't. He just watched the woman as she scrambled mentally for a moment, then stopped and turned to meet his eyes with a look of anguished embarrassment, desperately begging for him to not look down on her. In response, Trevor closed his eyes, breathed a deep sigh, and shook his head – who was he to judge? He, too, had turned out to be pretty terrible at not giving a shit, after all.

And so, to spare his proud friend, just this once, the pain of admitting defeat, he did so in her stead.

'One day's delay isn't that bad, I guess,' he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you were wondering what led to my interpretation of what Trevor's sexual history might look like, well. I started out with the assumption that whatever the case, he's probably not a virgin. My angle with Trevor is that he's a common man with common flaws with a limited amount of glaring omissions on that front, so in an atmosphere that endorses sex-seeking behaviour, him having sought out instant gratification even at the cost of his own safety fits at least teenaged Trevor better than him having been smart and moderate about it. Afaik the dominant Christian view of men and sex throughout much of the middle ages was that compared to women, men are rational and moderate in their passions but even then, their manly vigour has to go somewhere sometimes, preferably into a vagina because putting semen anywhere else is N A S T Y, right? So, there have to be sex workers around, at the very least, or the poor lads might just get sick or at worst, drop dead! Something something four humours something something not enough nightly emissions, man go boom. 
> 
> The rest was me figuring that 1. as someone who's also kept down by the Man and whose family used to have a minimum of one woman capable of knocking down a castle in Livonia, there's a good chance that Trevor is fairly sympathetic towards women for the way 15th century European society treats them. As a consequence, he could be generally more chill with women than with (Christian) men. 2. Plenty of women would have found his treatment of women as full-fledged people, not to mention his handsome looks and lonesome soul, pretty hot. 3. the image of Trevor being assaulted and chased out of towns by enraged husbands and fathers just seems about right to me.
> 
> The question is, then, how personally acquainted would Trevor be with cockwarts, among other things. I'mmmmm... not committed enough to gritty realism to explore that. Consider him lucky and/or an occasionally seen client of some old crone who can perform a variety of them penis spells.


	13. Don't Be Oedipus, Son

'A rat problem,' Trevor repeated, unimpressed.

The man before him, who had just spoken of said problem, shrunk a little under his stare.

Trevor reiterated his request with even more disbelief, 'You're asking us to deal with... a _rat problem.'_

The man defended himself, 'Well they weren't actin' normal and they were _huge!_ Must be all the poisoned meat they've been eatin'!'

The Belmont heir rolled his eyes. He had known to dread the word getting around that he and Sypha were staying for another day but still, this was worse than he had expected. Yet, he had to admit, he was a bit surprised that Sypha wasn't jumping at the chance to sign them up for the sake of the common good. Wondering what was up, he turned his head to the side to look at his partner and cocked an eyebrow at her. He found that while she wasn't exactly sulking, she was certainly a bit down, out of sorts, appearing reluctant to look him, or anyone, in the eye. Perhaps that was to be expected after the whole robe fiasco.

'How do you feel about going on a rat hunt, Sypha?' the vampire hunter asked.

The Speaker glanced at him briefly, unsurely. After a beat, she shrugged.

'It's your call,' she responded.

Trevor clicked his tongue and, in no hurry whatsoever, turned to look at the townsman again.

'Might as well check it out, I guess,' he said. 'It's not like we're leaving anytime soon.'

From the corner of his eye, he saw his partner flinch. Damn it, he shouldn't have said that...

In any case, the two followed four robust men out of the fort and through town, towards the western town gate that the hunters had originally come through. The story of these townsfolk was, they had gone to dispose of the sheep that Sypha had trapped with ice, only to run into a problem taking their remains to the piles of animal carcasses: the piles had apparently been feeding quite a few rats which had begun to lose their fear of humans. As if they needed proof of this, the youngest man of the bunch, younger than Sypha and Trevor, showed off a big bite wound on his ankle.

'You... you should probably show that to Uncle, err, the Speaker elder,' Sypha told him, disturbed.

Trevor snorted from behind her, which prompted the mage to glance at him again. Upon averting her eyes, she slowed down a little so she fell further behind the townsfolk and returned to her partner's side. Yep, from the uncharacteristically cautious way she was behaving, it was painfully obvious that her conflict with her people was gnawing at her. Sure enough, after a moment's silence, looking off to the side while walking next to him, Sypha brought up a seemingly random fact.

'Auntie Stana wasn't born a Speaker, you know,' she said, trying to sound casual. 'She used to be an ordinary Wallachian woman.'

Trevor side-eyed her suspiciously. '… Okay,' he responded.

Sypha continued, 'Danai has told me that thanks to Auntie's father's debt, she got married off to a cruel husband who punished her severely, for just about everything she did.'

'Uh-huh,' the vampire hunter said in a neutral tone.

'When it got too much, she ran away and was welcomed by Uncle's caravan,' Sypha spoke on. 'Uncle helped her recover from her fears, but she still sometimes acts like her making a mistake is the end of the world.'

Finally, Trevor let out a deep, frustrated sigh, running his hand through his hair. 'Look,' he began, doing his best to not sound too exasperated. 'I already told you: it's fine. You don't have to excuse yourself,' he assured her. 'Let's just move on, try to make the most of this shitty day.'

Sypha tensed and gave him a quick wary look. 'Okay,' she said as she looked ahead of her again.

Trevor raised an eyebrow at her, concerned. Just like he had feared, being disappointed in and ashamed of her beloved people was doing a number on her – she was no doubt going to recover from it soon enough, but it was hardly nice to look at. Worst of all, apart from urging her to get over it quick, something that most definitely wasn't going to help, he didn't know what to say to her. Yet, he was supposed to tell her that he had been plotting to run for the hills after delivering her to her family... God, why did the Speakers have to completely fuck things up with Sypha now, of all times?

Oh well. There was little to be done about that anymore. He ought to take his own advice and just try to work with what he had. How he was doing that by letting himself be sicked at some overly zealous vermin like a ratting dog he wasn't sure, but he had agreed to it and he was already halfway across town, so he wasn't going to back out of it now.

Or, so he thought. Soon after he and his merry band exited the town proper and passed the depressing piles of corpses to the depressing piles of carcasses, he started to wonder if there was actually any point in him being there. When he and Sypha walked into the alley between the stinking heaps, ravenous rodents started to crawl out of the woodwork and he realised something rather obvious: these rats were large, sure, but they were still very much rat-sized! They were small, they were fast, there was a lot of them, and just like the other mad animals, they were all rushing towards the intruders at once, with no regard for their own safety. These were just about the worst type of enemy to be fighting against with whips and dinky little knives! He might as well have just stomped them to death, for which there was absolutely no need when his partner could just torch them with incredible ease.

And so, he just retreated. With a look of defeat, he joined the five other men in being useless, just awkwardly standing around and watching the dutiful huntress do her job. She didn't even need to do much, just stand inside a ring of intense fire, moving a few steps further down the alleyway between the heaps of dead animals to trigger another wave of rats. After her first relocation, just watching the rats run into their deaths, she turned to Trevor and his five peers, appearing a little troubled.

'Trevor?' she called out. She spoke out loud what was on both of their minds: 'I don't think there's a lot for you to do here.'

The vampire hunter swallowed and glanced to his side at one of the townsmen, who had done exactly as much about the rats as he had.

'Yeah,' Trevor responded unenthusiastically, 'I figured.'

Sypha grimaced somewhat apologetically, although her partner wasn't sure why – it wasn't as if it was her fault that rats were small.

'I'll take care of these rats,' she assured Trevor. 'Also, I think it would be smartest to try to burn as many of these poisoned carcasses as possible. That might take a while though, so... Could you maybe go take the horses to the pasture?' she asked. 'Pick up our clothes from the inn as well?'

The townsfolk snickered at this - apparently they thought these chores funny for a man to do while his woman was out dealing with vermin and disgusting heaps of rotting meat. Well, the joke was on them: Trevor was happy to oblige. Going on a bit of a walk was ten times better than just standing around doing nothing.

'Sure, why not,' he responded over the distance.

'As for the rest of you,' Sypha said, speaking to the five other men, 'well, reducing all these animals to ash would be easier if they were a bit more spread out.' She suggested to them, 'So if you could go get better footwear, some more people, and pitchforks or something to climb these piles and break them up, that would really help.'

The snickering came to an immediate stop. Trevor glanced at his fellow men again and wondered if they were going to have a problem following a woman's instructions. Just in case they were, he said, 'Well lads. Time to get going, then!'

And so, despite some grumbling from the five townsfolk, all the men walked back to town. Soon after entering the town proper the vampire hunter and the rest went their separate ways, with the townsfolk heading to where others were cleaning up rubble and Trevor heading for the inn. Nobody was there, as was indicated by the locked front and back doors, but that didn't hinder the vampire hunter much: his and his partner's wet clothes had been hung outside. He took them down and even changed out of his uncomfortable borrowed clothes then and there, behind the inn – it wasn't as if there were people around to watch him. Afterwards he left the innkeeper's clothes hanging where his own clothes had hung, niftily avoiding the task of folding them.

With this over with, Trevor made his way up the hill to the fort. There, he dropped Sypha's clothes at the wagon, chatted a little with a soldier who was curious about the whole rat ordeal, then finally got the geldings out. Since it looked like Sypha's project was going to take a while and he had nothing planned for after he had taken the horses, he took his sweet time getting there.

Once Trevor was out of the easternmost town gate and had reached the more rural lots beyond the wall, he looked out to the still sullied, stinky river. He looked across the red water to the opposite bank, then the farms on that side of the river, then the opposite shoulder of the valley. The next day, they were finally going to go there and keep going east... one would hope, anyway. Not only was it possible that more Speaker nonsense cropped up, but a thick veil of clouds had also enshrouded the far eastern sky, promising precipitation in some form at last. If they were lucky, it would come down as just rain, which would hold them up only for the duration of it. If they were unlucky, it was going to be heavy snow which would slow the wagon down to a crawl if not stop the wagon entirely until the snow melted. At worst, they were going to have to leave the wagon behind and walk the horses to the next town, then come back for the wagon much later.

If they did start getting snow regularly, though, what then? Well, at least they knew that if the Codrii Speakers truly were in the commune closest to Lacul Vulturilor, they weren't getting away since they were as held back by snow as much as he and Sypha were. Since they were a pair of young and healthy people, they could just leave the horses and the wagon behind in a commune and leg it through the snow in a pinch, too. Ack, except... Sypha wore bloody sandals, didn't she? She had justified them by saying they didn't stay cold _and_ wet for long after getting drenched, which was true enough, but no way was she going to be able to wade through snow in them. Those things had to be swapped out for more sensible wear at the earliest possible opportunity.

The vampire hunter let out a long deep sigh. He hated this, having to make long-term plans for travel. If there was ever a good thing about traveling alone on foot and having no particular destination, it was that this stress-inducing part of travel was entirely optional. After all, since he didn't care for his own well-being much, he had often just decided he was going to tough it out until the next settlement or die. Doing that, he had discovered that he was actually pretty good at keeping himself alive, resulting even in a sense of achievement and pride. Some of the very few times he had ever felt truly accomplished had, in fact, been when he had arrived somewhere and he had gotten the reaction of 'You came through _there?_ Alone, on foot?!'

So... That was another reason to not be with Sypha, Trevor supposed. Being with her would mean not only having to negotiate each move with her, but also having to plan everything around the horses. One had to constantly keep tabs on how much feed was left, keep enough money at all times to buy more, always be a bit concerned about it running out, and worry about any of the endless number of things that could randomly make the animals sick... Going alone was just so much simpler.

As Trevor thought about this, he stared into the distance and came to a slow stop. Obediently, the geldings stopped as well, just looking around them for a minute. After a few swivels of their ears and a couple swishes of their grey tails, though, they got antsy. The bolder of the two stepped towards the human, quite cautiously since Sypha had taken to enforcing all kinds of "rules" with it, and lowered its head over Trevor's shoulder. With its upper lip twitching, it sniffed the human in case he had treats stashed away somewhere, as he was occasionally known to have.

Caught off-guard, the vampire hunter recoiled a little, then gave the impatient animal a bemused look. He snickered and reached his arm under its neck to give the far side of it a casual pat.

'You're not a burden, boys,' he muttered, 'but you _are_ a bit of a hassle.'

He began walking again with the geldings in tow. He then had a somewhat depressing thought: if he found it this tiring to think about the needs of one woman and two horses, how would he have fared if his family hadn't been annihilated? He hadn't been even close to being the eldest son of the eldest son so he'd had no extraordinary expectations to live up to, yet he would have eventually had to deal with his share of the things that had made all the adults at home so miffed and frazzled. Disagreements within the family, finances, difficulties with land management, and the endless ways in which one had to keep up appearances and bolster one's reputation, lest anyone thought to test how tight the family's grip on its territory was.

Well, he could, of course, have done a bit of a gamble to do away with a lot of that. By putting all his effort into becoming an efficient hunter, he might have gotten a begrudging pass for not participating in anything more complicated than tracking down worthy acquisitions for the Hold. But would he have been able to handle the guilt, the feeling of inadequacy whenever he would have come back home, not knowing what exactly was going on and what could be done about it?

And what about his eventual wife and progeny in that scenario? As a man, he wouldn't have been able to get away with not continuing the family line. In exchange for giving him a relatively carefree life, the rest of his family would have insisted on arranging his marriage from beginning to the day he was wed, to make sure he didn't cock anything up for the rest of them. And after that, his eventual children would have been raised largely without any say from him, as he would have spent most of his time away. They would have been taken care of, no question, but he would have been a bystander in their lives. Trevor knew all too well how this would have worked... This had been the path his father had chosen, after all.

Remembering his father's toils, Trevor chuffed in bitter amusement. Should he have been able to reach his family beyond their graves, ask them to comment on the choice he was struggling to make, he wouldn't have known what most of them would have said. His father though? He knew exactly what he would have told him. It would have been a repeat of what he had already uttered a couple of times, on both occasions so very tiredly upon having returned home just to get an earful from his own father and siblings.

'Son... I _wish_ I had your problems.'

Oh dear. He never did catch a break before he died, did he? Poor bastard.

That wistful thought was the last one Trevor had of his father before, suddenly, his attention was drawn elsewhere. At the end of the dirt road he was following, there was a strange and worrying sight. He stopped to squint at it, wondering if he ought to go any further. The Speaker caravan, it... was full of people? It looked like half the bloody town was there. And judging by the smoke columns, there were several fires burning amidst them. 'Violent mob,' some paranoid part of Trevor's mind immediately said, but that seemed unlikely, rationally speaking. Too many people appeared to be just peacefully loafing around.

Though the vampire hunter hardly felt like socialising, he had to admit to being pretty curious about this phenomenon. After a moment's deliberation, he urged the geldings to walk again and, with a slight feeling of dread, trudged on. Once he reached the edge or the hubbub, the cause of it only became more mysterious: almost all of these people were _women_. Scattered among them were a few Speakers and many children of various ages but the rest? All ordinary Wallachian women. Also, almost all of them were doing crafts, for some reason? Be it needlepoint, knitting, or patching up old underwear, they were sitting in wagons, on rocks, or even on the ground in little rings.

Trevor could just have started asking around to figure this out but instead, he decided he would go find Athon. He was about to do just that with the horses still attached when the geldings made it clear that they had other ideas: one of them suddenly raised its head to neigh so loudly it nearly made the vampire hunter jump out of his skin. Whilst he reeled away from the horse, the gelding's call got a response from across the pasture, where the Speakers' horses and mules were.

'Alright, go see your friends then, _fuck,_ ' Trevor cussed as he detached the horses' leads and let the animals go their own way.

Now, finally, he could get to the centre of this crowd and why the hell it had gathered. He got his answer when he walked towards where the smoke originated, finding many of the Speakers and several townswomen in one spot, all congregated around several piles of embers, busily making an unholy amount of food. Athon was there sitting on his knees by some embers, frying bread, and so Trevor approached him at a leisurely pace, seeing how long it took for the older man to notice him. He did so when Trevor was about five paces away and when Athon looked up from his task at hand and laid his eyes on his newest guest, he did a double take.

'Belmont!' he said, surprised.

Trevor stopped on the opposite side of the embers and, somewhat awkwardly, rubbed his neck.

'I was walking our horses when I saw all this and wondered if a witch trial is taking place,' he remarked detachedly.

The corner of the Speaker elder's mouth twitched. He let out a short nervous laugh: 'Ha! _Ha_.' After that, he quickly pushed himself up from the ground.

'Well no, this is all my wife's doing,' he explained, as if this clarified anything. Seeing the vampire hunter's confusion, he went on, 'These people, some of them anyway, are here to help Stana fix Sypha's robe.'

He looked down at the bread he had abandoned on the frying pan as he continued, 'It all started with a handful of people but then more just kept coming, with crafts of their own, and then ingredients for food started flowing in. People are hungry for distractions after all the misery this town has gone through, I suppose?'

'Huh,' Trevor responded.

Athon, seeing that he should flip his bread, quickly leaned down to do just that. Then, wincing as he stood up straight once again, he gave the people around him a quick scan.

'Usvan? Alesto? Somebody?' he called out with increasing uncertainty. 'Could someone take over for me? I need to speak with Belmont in peace for a moment.'

Trevor narrowed his eyes in suspicion at him. 'If you think I'm going to help you convince Sypha to get on with the whole storytelling business, you're sorely mistaken,' he informed the older man.

Said older man flinched a little, then made a hurried dismissive gesture at him. 'Oh, that was the far from what I was thinking of, I assure you!' he said sheepishly.

This did absolutely nothing to lessen Trevor's suspicion but, well, he had little enough to do that he obliged out of curiosity when Athon beckoned him to come with. They weaved through the crowd to the Speakers' house wagon, where the vampire hunter remembered what his partner had said about it. Casually, he commented:

'That's a fancy wagon. Must have cost an arm and a leg.'

Athon didn't exactly balk at this comment but he wasn't terribly happy about it either. 'It was a gift,' he said simply as he climbed the movable stairs up to its door.

Inside, the two men sat down, cross-legged, in awkward silence. Whilst Trevor put the geldings' leads down on the floor next to him, the elder used fire magic to light a candle and a tight bundle of some kinds of dry herbs that began emitting a smoke that had a spicy, vaguely pleasant fragrance. Once said smoke had snaked its way up to the ceiling, the elder regarded his guest once again.

'Now then,' he said in a friendly tone. 'I... wish to apologise to you too, Belmont. I am ever so sorry: I do not understand how my daughter could have acted this way. I see I have much work to do as a father and an elder.'

Trevor, sitting with his arms folded across his chest, hemmed aloofly at this. 'You didn't need to apologise to me,' he responded. 'Speaker affairs have nothing to do with me, after all.'

'You are with Sypha, though,' the older man pointed out. 'As such, you are as good as family to us.'

'Well, you're free to think of me as whatever you like, of course,' his guest granted, 'but despite my lack of a family, I'm not so desperate for one that I would like to be part of yours. I'm not too keen on what I have seen and heard of the family lives of you Speakers.'

With this, the older man's open and friendly expression turned stern. Trevor, hardly caring, stared back at him with an air of defiance, taking pleasure in being straightforward with someone so averse to blunt honesty.

'My family wasn't all that, I admit,' he went on. 'Bunch of stubborn louts whose solution to everything was to keep a stiff upper lip and soldier on. But, at least every Belmont was always accounted for! If you were a Belmont, you weren't just welcome to stay, you were desperately needed, as long as you didn't turn into a vampire or a werewolf anyway.'

Finally, Athon took a turn to speak up. 'I do not know what Sypha has told you,' he said in a stiff manner, 'but she has been _uniquely_ loved among our people. I do not know anyone as young as her who is as widely known and adored.'

'That's what she has led me to believe, certainly,' Trevor admitted in a scoffing tone. 'The thing is, though, I don't fucking buy that. To me, it sure seems like you people are relieved to see her go.'

'That...!' Athon began to object in alarm, then stopped to calm himself down. He scowled at Trevor somewhat resentfully for a moment before he dropped his gaze, shook his head, and sighed.

'A lot of us _are_ relieved to see her go,' he said patiently, with grave seriousness, 'but, only because we knew it was her destiny.'

'Huh,' Trevor said, amused and intrigued. He hadn't expected this man, of all people, to just casually blurt out something about the prophecy. Now, did Trevor care if uncle dearest here told Sypha about them having had a talk about this?

He... supposed he didn't, not anymore.

'So, you _did_ know all about that beforehand?' he questioned, then sneered, shaking his head. 'You Speakers and your fate nonsense, I swear... I used to quite respect you people, you know, before all the horseshit about me and Sypha being destined to be together came into the picture.'

Athon was quite taken aback. He gave Trevor a look of utter bewilderment as he asked, 'Excuse me?' After a moment of merely blinking owlishly at the vampire hunter, he stammered, 'I... I thought you were yet to be told of that part of the Story.'

'Well if it were up to you lot, I wouldn't know a thing about it, would I,' Trevor uttered unhappily. 'Unfortunately for you, the Sleeping Soldier himself told me. Since then I've been waiting around, wondering how bloody long it's going to take until Sypha has the courtesy to spill the beans.'

' _Oh_ ,' the elder said. He then furrowed his brows and stroked his beard in contemplation. 'That is quite... unexpected...' he muttered.

The vampire hunter glowered at him, daring him to try to fenagle his way out of speaking about this. He was a little impressed with the older man's guts, then, when he suddenly waved his hand dismissively.

'Well, in any case,' he said in a remarkably casual manner, 'when I spoke of destiny, I did not mean it like that.'

Trevor gave him an incredulous look, warning with his expression alone that he was _not_ entertained by his shenanigans.

Athon then explained, unpertrubed, 'Nobody knew that Sypha would become the Scholar of legend. In hindsight, it makes sense that she did, but before it happened... All we knew was that her soul yearns to be elsewhere.'

When the vampire hunter's doubtful expression didn't soften, the elder shrugged. Despite suspecting it was for naught, he went on.

'She has done her best to hide it, but it has always been rather obvious to anyone who knows her,' he said rather casually. He then chuckled a bit nervously, seeming an odd mix of disturbed and charmed. 'Ever since she was a child, she has had this sparkle in her eye whenever she listened to stories of terrible things happening. You know what I mean, don't you? Also, she has always been fierce, prideful, ambitious, even power-hungry at times,' he recalled.

He lowered his voice a little, 'And of course, the mumblings and grumblings eventually started coming in through the grapevine: the odd Belnades girl fancies herself too good for other Speakers. I have no doubt that she has tried to be as tactful and discreet as she can, but... from what I have heard, it has been rather plain to be seen that she is unimpressed with our men and women alike.'

He shook his head and let out a troubled sigh.

'Indeed, the writing has been on the wall for a long time now,' he said. 'I warned her grandfather, told him to think very carefully whether it is wise to teach her the means to raise hell on earth. What if when she outgrows us, she abandons our peaceful ways entirely, becomes consumed by hubris...?'

His voice tapered off and he pressed his lips into a thin straight line. Seeing Trevor's look of dismay that bordered on loathing, his expression became wistful and fatigued.

'In any case,' he went on in a somewhat hollow voice, 'perhaps it is our preparation for her flying out of the nest that has made us look so callous in your eyes, Belmont? I do not know what else to say about that except that we have tried to do it with the utmost compassion and care for her well-being.'

For a moment, Trevor merely stared back at the man, blinking. His cynical wit found him soon enough, though.

'I think it _might_ have more to do with the fact that you don't trust her not to turn on you,' he stated mockingly, a little weirded out that he even had to say this out loud.

Athon gazed at him sadly. 'Power is intoxicating, Belmont,' he pointed out. 'Even the best of us can become drunk with it, lose ourselves in it.'

'Which is rather ironic for _you_ to say,' Trevor said with a hem, 'considering that Sypha uses her power to help people while your daughter uses hers to burn people's clothes.'

The elder let out a deep sigh, letting his shoulders slump. 'Raela _thought_ she was helping,' he said. 

'It is also ironic because _you_ ,' Trevor enunciated, not at all caring what his kid thought, 'are using yours to turn Sypha against the rest of you Speakers.'

Athon flinched, then quickly became remorseful.

'I... have by no means meant to,' he swore in a quiet, solemn manner. 'My grievances with Sypha were never meant to reach her ears the way they did here. But, as I said before: I suppose I still have much to learn as a father and an elder.'

Trevor informed him coolly, 'Based on the fact that Sypha told me you have _never_ quite approved of her _,_ I would say that the cat's actually been out of the bag for a while now. You probably should have talked with her about this ages ago.'

The Speaker elder raised his eyebrows slightly in surprise. Upon seeing that Trevor was entirely serious, his expression melted, left him looking about ten years older. 'I see,' he murmured. 'I have much to reflect on, then.'

He sighed, and even though his shoulders looked to have been as low as they could go, they somehow slumped lower still.

'Well, in any case,' he spoke, making an effort to sound more energised and determined. It wasn't much, but at least he managed to not look quite so miserable. In fact, when Trevor gave him a look of mild pity, he seemed a bit offended by it.

'I promised Sypha that I would not speak of the Story with you,' he spoke in a low voice, knitting his brows. 'But, you seem to quite relish straight talk and also, I am a little concerned about how much you know. Belmont, do you know _why_ Sypha has kept this information from you?'

Trevor hemmed. With a low drone, he admitted, 'I thought I knew, but... I'm not so sure, anymore.'

Athon nodded, seeming more confident now. 'Yes, I think it is reasonable to assume you are operating with a dangerous half-truth that is best made whole sooner, rather than later,' he stated.

'Okay?' Trevor responded, not sure what to think.

'Let me ask you a question first, though,' the elder implored. 'Sypha has led me to believe that you are a stubborn man. That you... like to defy expectations,' he stammered. 'Would you say that this is accurate?'

'I just like to decide for myself what I do with my own life, thank you very much,' Trevor spoke indignantly.

Athon narrowed his eyes a little as he studied the younger man's expression. After a moment of staring into his soul, he said, 'I... shall take that as a yes, then.'

Trevor rolled his eyes.

'In any case,' the elder continued, 'it is exactly your freedom to decide that Sypha wanted to protect by keeping the prophecy hidden from you. She wanted you to have a choice.'

'And how the hell does one follow after the other?' Trevor asked sceptically.

Athon spoke in a sagely manner, 'To do things merely out of a stubborn habit is not true freedom, Belmont.' He explained, 'Sypha wanted you to think about what you want and make your choice based on that. Not to see you fall to the whims of a habitual response you have to feeling as if your freedom is under threat.'

Trevor had a knee-jerk reaction to this, yet when he began to object, he started doubting himself. The elder, then, took advantage of his lack of confidence and just kept speaking without giving him a turn.

'Of course, she did not do this _just_ for your sake, probably,' he admitted with ease. 'Sypha is a proud woman after all, so of course she wanted you to choose her, but also do it out of your own free will. To be rejected would have been hard on her pride, certainly, but there are outcomes more humiliating than that.'

Trevor thought he saw a bit of a sly gleam in the elder's eye when he said, 'You could, for example, have instinctively reeled away from her and then, upon further reflection, begrudginly come back to her. Like she is a lesser evil, better than nothing.'

Feeling like his wrist had just been slapped, the vampire hunter winced and drew back a little. Seeing this, Athon gave him a look of mild amusement, then shook his head.

'And if that does not convince you, well... we Speakers do also have a rule of thumb concerning prophecies,' he informed. 'Namely, that one should not tell people about foretellings whose outcomes they find unfavourable. Not unless there is a very good reason to make an exception.'

'You see,' he lectured, 'history as we Speakers know it shows time and again that if a prophecy is truly accurate and the outcome is preordained, nothing will keep it from coming to pass. In fact, efforts to circumvent such a fate seems to only ensure it happens anyway, in just about the worst, most humiliating way possible.'

The Belmont heir, sneered. 'What the hell is even the point of prophecies, then?' he asked.

Athon returned his questioning look with sad resignation, with a hint of bitterness.

'We live in a world created by a mad and petty Creator - there might not be a point,' he admitted. 'On the other hand, He has always wanted to be the only one to reveal the mysteries of our future and He loves to play favourites,' he pointed out. 'It makes a twisted kind of sense that those who wish to better the lives of the unfortunate by warning them only creates more misfortune. Conversely, speaking of blessings He has decided to bestow in the future can bring forth more blessings, and that seems consistent with His character as well.'

Trevor clicked his tongue and rolled his eyes – this sounded like a bunch of boring nonsense. He was about to say as much, too, but then he realised something that probably should have stuck out to him much earlier.

'Wait a minute,' he mumbled and cast a doubtful look at the elder. 'Sypha _didn't_ tell me about the prophecy, so...'

Athon returned his look with a knowing, patient, somewhat apologetic expression. 'She was reluctant to say so, but I am certain that at least on some level, she saw the makings of a tragedy here, Belmont,' he stated sternly. 'And sadly, so do I. I suspect it would have been much better if neither one of you had learned what the Story predicts for you two.'

Trevor furrowed his brows all the while his strained gaze turned inwards. 'I want you to be happy, alright?' - these last words of his partner's from the day before rang in his head, making his face fall and stomach writhe in discomfort.

'… Oh,' he spoke numbly. 'Well... Shit.'

Athon breathed a small sigh of resignation and now, it was his turn to study him with a look of pity in his warm brown eyes.

'I am not going to tell you what to choose,' he spoke quietly. He admitted, 'For all I know, the Story could be merely partially accurate as far as prophecies go, meaning that you and Sypha might not be destined to be together after all.'

Trevor blinked and turned his attention back to the elder.

'But still, I _implore_ you,' Athon enunciated, 'whatever you do, do not form an obsession about proving our legend wrong. I know it is difficult, if not impossible, but choose as if you have never heard of it. Choose what feels best for you, but make peace with the fact that the prophecy, like sudden illness and death, may come to pass regardless of what you choose.'

Trevor stared at the Speaker in stunned silence for a moment, then hung his head and let out a long, troubled sigh.

'Great,' he said flatly. 'I bloody hate this fate shit...'

Athon nodded. 'We all do,' he assured the younger man. 'And I shall hate it all the more if Sypha hears of me breaking my promise to her. So... could you perhaps show mercy to an old man and not tell her about this conversation we have had?' he pleaded. 'Until you have left this town, at least.'

The vampire hunter hemmed coolly. 'I'll think about it,' he murmured.

With a deep exasperated sigh, Athon just... gave up. Somewhat abruptly, he leapt into a wholly different matter altogether.

'You will stay to eat, yes?' he questioned casually.

His surprised guest let out a wordless grumble before managing a proper response. 'No, I don't think I will,' he said with mild disdain.

As if sensing where his opposition was coming from, Athon added, 'We could pack you a portion for Sypha too, so neither one of you has to cook.'

Trevor flinched and hesitated. Shit, that actually sounded pretty nice... After some hemming and hawing, then, he agreed.

'Okay. I guess I might take you up on that,' he muttered reluctantly.

With that decided, the two men exited the dim, smoky wagon into daylight that wasn't as harsh on Trevor's eyes as he might have expected it to be. Looking up at the sky, it was clear why: the thick clouds had crept over the pasture, racing to the west far faster than the sun was crawling. A nippy breeze had arrived with them, promising colder days for the rest of the week.

Whilst Trevor still looked up at the clouds, Athon told him over the chattering of some nearby women that he would send Danai to bring him his and Sypha's food, then hurried back to help with the cooking. After a slow, pensive sigh, the vampire hunter lowered his gaze and looked around him, through the crowd of people, wondering where to go. Somewhere quieter, certainly.

And so, he weaved past the groups of working women, dodging children who were running amok with a singular sheepdog, probably one of the few still left alive in town, until he was uphill from them all. When he was looking down at all the madness from a safe distance, he sat down on the ground and watched it for a while, panning his gaze across the bustle of people without actually absorbing any of it. When he grew tired of this, he leaned back and laid down on the ground with his hands behind his head. He looked up at the clouds as he pondered about everything he had learnt from the Speaker elder.

So... what did he think of Sypha's pursuit of him now? Some cynical part of him reckoned what Athon had said had only confirmed his hunch: Sypha was indeed only trying to fulfill the prophecy, all his hunch had off base on had been the reason why. But no, he couldn't believe this, not anymore. That appreciative glint and look of longing in her eyes, that palpable eagerness to pet and kiss him, that pleasurable suspense that had lingered between them afterwards - that stuff wasn't easy to fake and Sypha wasn't good at keeping an act up. Some things she wore quite prominently on her sleeve and this happened to be one of such things: she was quite taken with him for some reason.

But, so, what had happened here, exactly? Evidence of Sypha having been pretty picky about companions was starting to stack up rather high and sure enough, she had quite unsubtly loathed him in the beginning. She had said that he had become a better person during their hunt for Dracula but... really? What on earth had he done to sweep her off her feet? It wasn't as if he had meant to do that. He hadn't even been flirty with her before she had started getting handsy with him.

He was going to have to ask her about this, he supposed. And if he liked her answer, then, well... _Shit._ First of all, he was going to prove Sypha right about him and compliments – he really wasn't used to being lavished with them. Second of all, he was going to be even more torn over whether he was going to stay with her or not. But, he supposed this bothered him enough that he had to find out. Maybe it would inform him how to best bring up the truth about his deceit? Eh. Fat chance, he suspected, but it was worth a try.

Trevor kept rather fruitlessly mulling over this all the way until he got himself some company. Soon after Danai had broken out of the crowd, he noticed her walking towards him. When he sat up to look at her properly, the young mother gave him a sheepish grin and closed the distance in a bit of a hurry.

'There you are!' she greeted him cheerily as soon as the distance permitted. When she reached him, she leaned over and handed him two bundles of cloth, apparently containing food of some sort.

'One for you, one for Sypha,' she said as Trevor took them. 'Don't shake or squeeze them too much unless you want to make a mess!'

'Thanks,' Trevor grunted and found that whatever was shifting inside the bundles, there were more than one per bundle and they were warm.

After this, Danai held out her empty hand towards Trevor.

'Also,' she said, 'don't worry about having your hands full with the horses on your way back! We will bring them to the fort for you in the evening.'

Trevor was confused until he realised what the woman wanted: the geldings' leads. He placed one of the cloth bundles in his lap as he picked the ropes up from the ground next to him and handed them over.

'Alright then,' he said somewhat stiffly.

Having taken the leads, Danai hesitated, intending to leave but clearly wanting to say something more.

'Mmh...' she hummed indecisively, tapping her chin with her index finger a couple of times. 'Belmont, may I... give you a bit of advice?' she asked, then added, 'As an older sister and someone who has known Sypha for a long time?'

Trevor raised an eyebrow at her, then shrugged. 'Go ahead, I guess,' he said.

The woman tittered into her hand a little bashfully. 'I suppose you might already know this quite well yourself. But, just in case you don't!' she blathered, then leaned forward again. To make absolutely sure that the man knew she was letting him on in a secret, she held her palm next to her mouth.

'As the elder's granddaughter and the youngest of her group,' she spoke in a voice that wasn't the least bit lowered volume-wise, merely huskier, 'Sypha has always had a need to prove she is anything but coddled and spoilt. But the truth is... she loves to be babied much more than she lets on!'

'Uh,' Trevor responded. 'The fact that she bloody _loves_ being pampered is probably one of her least well kept secrets,' he said in deadpan.

Danai snorted, hiding her mouth behind her hand, and straightened her back. 'Yes, she is quite bad at hiding some things,' she agreed. She then began to add, 'But...'

Her expression turned a bit more serious and sad, which earned a quizzical look from Trevor.

'But,' she began again in a less energetic voice, 'when it really counts, she is much better at it. And this, this is something that matters to her a lot: much like any little sister, she loves attention but she hates asking for it when she feels like a burden. And she feels that way more often than one would think.'

Trevor became more serious as well, listening to the young woman intently.

Danai urged him gently, 'So, if she acts as if she needs nothing from you once this all is over, then perhaps try pampering her a little?' She chuckled quietly, then said, 'She will take to it quite well, I think, and she will likely return the favour... one way or another.'

The vampire hunter rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand, not entirely sure how he was supposed to respond. 'I'll, er. Keep that in mind,' he muttered.

After this, the elder's daughter bid him farewell and began walking away. Trevor was left sitting on the ground kind of stunned: had Athon's daughter just instructed him how to get laid? He supposed she had. Speakers really were rather casual about this kind of thing, huh.

In any case, he figured he ought to eat. A rather agreeable smell was wafting off of the warm bundles, reminding him that he was indeed quite hungry. Upon opening one bundle, he found it to contain more bundles, sort of: there were four flatbreads neatly wrapped and folded around what seemed to be some kind of filling. Upon tasting it, he found it to be an approximation of what Sypha had cooked at Dracula's castle. Completely lacked the spices, unfortunately, although that was only to be expected - these Speakers didn't have access to a vampire warlord's wealth.

Anyway. Concerned by the possibility that his partner was returning to the fort to start preparing food without needing to, Trevor ate his portion quickly. When he was done, he got up and walked back to the Speakers around the fire, intending to return the piece of cloth that his bundle had been wrapped with. Seeing that Athon and his people were terribly busy handing out food to everyone, he shrugged and wrapped the cloth as reinforcement around Sypha's bundle, then kept going.

Once he was far enough from the crowd to hear the incessant chatter and laughter, Trevor glanced over his shoulder at the Speaker caravan, pondering. Remembering what Athon had said about stubborn habits and freedom and seeing the result of him having bent over backwards for all these people that had just randomly decided to show up, he couldn't help but to feel a hint of irony. Speakers worked so hard to accommodate complete strangers with no strings attached, only to not extend that treatment to their own people... Truly, a blacksmith's home only has wooden knives.

Trevor turned his attention back to where he was going for a moment, then looked west, squinting as he searched for something specific between what he could see of the distance between nearby farmhouses. After a moment, he was surprised to actually find it: another dark of a column of smoke rising to the sky in the distance. Sypha really was helping the townsfolk burn all the dead animals, then... Of course she was. She was clever, she was strong-willed, she could be surprisingly ruthless at times, but deep down, she was still a Speaker and Speakers couldn't just walk away from people who were in need.

And her being a Speaker was what was going to save him if he ultimately decided not to stay with her, wasn't it? An argument would happen, Trevor figured, but should he calmly explain himself, say firmly that he wanted to leave, he could no longer see her holding him back. Or even holding it against him if they met again.

After all, her people's way of loving was to let each other go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made up a lot of shit about Trevor's family for this fic just in case I'd need it so there's some stuff that I really like but can't really do anything with in this here story. I'm tempted to write a fic about Trevor's early life to put it all to use but I don't think I'll do anything about it until Season 4 rolls out, at least. Or maybe I'll cobble together a bunch of short stories that includes that and a bunch of other things I've mercifully excluded from this story? Dunno.


	14. From Meso to Apex to Keystone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are happening to animals again.

Four hours of watching a field burn. Preceded by two hours of trying to instruct men very reluctant to help, who hadn't even wanted to believe that incinerating spread out carcasses was easier than burning a big wet rotting pile. And that had been preceded by the whole robe fiasco. To say that Sypha was having a bad day was an understatement if there ever was one. And now, after all that? She still had almost half a day to burn through.

God, she just wanted to leave this town and forget she had ever set foot in it.

Walking through said town, back towards the fort, the Speaker knew she wasn't at her best. A couple of men walked by pushing wheelbarrows full of rubble, laughing and chatting between huffs, and she scowled at them for no particularly good reason. Coming across more townsfolk tearing down a burnt building, she felt like she was looking at them through bars. She was bitter – she had done so much for these people, for everyone, and what was her reward? Being ignored for being a woman and having her robe destroyed. _And_ being guilt tripped into sticking around so the people responsible wouldn't feel so bad about having done a bad thing.

Sypha tore her eyes off of the townsfolk and breathed a deep sigh. She could already feel her grandfather's hand on her shoulder in spirit, ready to hold her back. For good reason too, she supposed, because of how raw and volatile she felt after all this trouble with Uncle Barba. She ought to keep herself on a short leash until things blew over, lest she do or say something regrettable.

With that, she concentrated on what she could do to make things better. She felt bad for having gotten Trevor mixed into all this and though he had told her that he was fine, that the delay was fine, that everything was fine, she had a feeling that the ice under her feet had gotten a whole lot thinner. She had to tread carefully, be easy on her irritable lion's nerves – she couldn't really reimburse him for his troubles in any meaningful way, after all. She could do more than her fair share of chores, not tease or scold him as much, and... that was about it. If only she was able to offer him sex or a guilt-free night of drunkenness – that would have given her more wiggle room, surely.

Well, she had to just make do without for the time being, she supposed. For the rest of the day, she was going to be nice, cook something good, make the day go by smoothly, without lingering on the whole robe thing. In fact, she was going to be extra good until she could let Trevor go on a drinking binge or something, just to be safe.

With that in mind, Sypha did her best to purge her nastier thoughts as she approached the fort, pumping herself up with determination instead as she stepped in through the gate. Already in the barbican, before seeing out into the bailey, she could tell that her partner had returned: the unmistakable sound of his leather whip cracking sounded from the bailey, echoes bouncing between the stone walls of the barbican. Once the Speaker was out in the brightest daylight again she quickly located where the sound was coming from, as the only people out in the bailey were congregated near the barracks. Once she got closer, she confirmed what she had come to suspect: a bunch of soldiers were watching the vampire hunter practice his whipmanship.

'Belmont, your, erh, _partner_ is here,' one of the soldiers notified him when Sypha reached them.

The magician lowered her chin and eyed at the soldiers as she walked past them towards Trevor. Most of them eyed her in return, some with disinterest and some with a faint air of amusement. These men rubbed Sypha the wrong way, all soldiers did, but like she had done thus far, she suppressed her annoyance, ignored them, and turned her attention to the Belmont heir.

Trevor's attention, meanwhile, was squarely on his target, his back turned towards the Speaker as he still sized up the challenge the target posed. He was poised to attack but completely still, like a cat watching birds – the sight of this gave Sypha a warm fuzzy feeling and brought a tired smile on her lips as she approached him. She had an impulse to go all the way up to him and startle him by wrapping her hands around him but, well, of course she didn't follow through with it, instead she stopped at a thoughtful, non-disruptive distance from him and waited quietly.

Sure enough, after careful deliberation, he cracked his whip horizontally. The weapon hit what was presumably his mark: a stone precariously balanced on a soldier's helmet, balanced on another helmet, balanced on a third helmet, standing on a barrel. The stone was flung somewhere in a blink of an eye, the soldiers groaned and clicked their tongues in exasperation, and the Belmont heir turned around, regarding the soldiers with a smug smirk plastered on his face. Sypha watched indifferently as a couple of said soldiers walked over to the stack of helmets, grumbling something about making the challenge harder.

'Target practice?' Sypha questioned and looked at Trevor again, raising an inquisitive eyebrow at him.

The man's lips curled upwards. 'Target practice _and_ earning us some ale money for the next town,' he gloated.

Sypha smiled and rolled her eyes. It was good he had made friends of sorts, she supposed, even if they were a pretty bad choice of company...

'Well,' she breathed out, letting her shoulders drop out of resignation, 'I guess I'll cook for us in the meantime.'

'No need,' Trevor told her casually. 'Your people insisted on treating me to a meal at the caravan and sent you some too.'

Sypha did a double take.

'It's in the wagon,' he informed her in response. 'So are your clothes.'

'Huh,' the Speaker said.

She hesitated for a moment. Her partner gave her an inquisitive look and was meaning to ask her something but then, just as he opened his mouth there was a sudden clatter behind him that garnered everyone's attention. Sypha craned her neck and leaned to the side to find that the two soldiers tinkering with the helmets had tipped them over, sending them rolling on the ground. Trevor chuckled at this while the other soldiers shouted suggestions and insults alike to their comrades.

Sypha glanced at Trevor and used this opportunity to complete her thought. Apart from her, Trevor, these soldiers, and a few more up on the wall, there was nobody around... She could have some time all to herself at the wagon. With her mood having become what it was, she could definitely have used it, too.

'I guess I might take a nap, then, after I've eaten?' she said in a hopeful tone.

Trevor turned his head to look back at her.

'Unless you need me for anything?' Sypha questioned.

The vampire hunter blinked a couple of times, then shrugged.

'Knock yourself out,' he told her.

Sypha nodded slowly while the vampire hunter turned around to size up the challenge that was being set up for him. The magician turned around as well, the bottom of her stomach tightening a little as she began walking towards the wagon. Somewhat nervously, she kept listening to the casual chatting of the men as it faded into the distance, hoping to not hear it until she was done with what she was meaning to do.

At the wagon, Sypha quickly downed her meal cold – she could pretty easily have heated it but just couldn't be bothered to. She then walked to the front of the wagon to make sure nobody was within peeping distance and changed back into her own clothes. She didn't tighten her sash, though, because, well, she was about to take a ”nap.” As in she was going to rub one out.

With that in mind, the magician took out a blanket to cover herself with and a blanket to roll into a pillow, then made herself comfortable on the wagon floor. She listened tensely for a moment for any disturbances outside the wagon and, upon only hearing the sharp crack of Trevor's whip again, exhaled slowly and relaxed. She pushed her skirt and underwear out of the way, slid her hands between her thighs, and as if she was starting to play a well practice instrument, her fingers moved out of muscle memory, quickly finding their preferred positions.

Sypha swallowed and took a deep breath as she tried to empty her mind and relax. This was always the hard part – having grown around with so many family members, often having struggled to find privacy, she became hyperalert every time she did this, always ready to pretend to really be just resting. She closed her eyes and, with her brow twitching, forcibly blocked out all distractions.

With that, everything was ready for the actors to take the stage. As so often tended to be the case when Sypha tried to arouse herself, faceless men and women engaged in acts of passion in her mind and she concentrated on what they were feeling. Soon, her mind started to wander, however – she wondered what it would have been like if things with Trevor had gone like she had thought they were going.

Perhaps hardly even a day into their journey, he would have already begun casting curious glances in her direction. He would have progressed to ever longer and hungrier stares, which she would have pretended to be oblivious to. She would have eventually felt like he was stalking her, waiting for an opportunity to corner her. She would have kept pretending not to notice until he would have, say, walked up to her from behind and put his hands on her waist.

When would this have been? Perhaps towards the end of a break. Maybe just as they would have begun putting away things after having eaten dinner. They ought to have then hurried to gain more distance that day, but Sypha would have supposed it could wait until her beast was properly satiated. She would have thus smiled and let him whisper his animalistic desires into her ear. She would have chuckled and told him that she preferred to be asked nicely but that she would make an exception this time. She would have then walked to the front of the wagon with mincing steps, without even glimpsing at him as he would have followed hot on her heels.

That was the beginning of the crescendo. In the wagon, Trevor would have had trouble containing himself, and try he would have. She would have murmured soothing words whilst he would have laid his hands on her: that he was going to be fine, that everything was going to be fine, that she had been expecting this and that he had been a good, patient boy. The size, weight, and strength of his body combined with his eagerness would have secretly been a little frightening to her, but in a thrilling way, so she wouldn't have let him know that even whilst–

'Still no word, huh?'

Sypha's eyes shot wide open and she froze in place. A man's voice was coming from somewhere worryingly near... somewhere above?

Another man's voice responded, 'Nope. If only Chief hadn't died – he'd know what the hell our lord wants us to do here.'

'Peace to his soul...'

It was a couple of soldiers up on the fort wall behind her, Sypha realised. Daring to breathe again, she lay still and waited, both for her heart to stop thrashing like a trapped animal and for the nuisances above her to leave. Her heart eventually calmed down, so that was great, but the men didn't seem intent on going anywhere, they just kept talking about the lack of leadership and how they had little idea what was going on with the rest of the country.

'Bloody monsters. If it's as bad as Belmont says, we can't just send a couple people to go get our orders on foot, can we?' one of them eventually complained.

The other one responded in a lowered voice, 'Nope. We need horses, at the very least. And since ours are all dead, well...'

There was a quiet snicker. 'Well, the Speakers have been generous thus far,' he said slyly. 'I'm sure they're more than happy to make a small donation.'

This made the eavesdropping Speaker below them snicker as well. 'Tsch, good luck with that...' she murmured under her breath. She wasn't feuding with dear Uncle Barba so much that it was going to keep her from informing him about these soldiers and their oh-so-urgent need for support, after all. Since Athon had already said that the caravan was soon going to move on to offer aid downstream, the soldiers were going to find themselves looking at an empty pasture, wondering where all the Speakers had gone.

Anyway... Sypha sighed, acknowledging that not only was she not going to get her rocks off anytime soon, she was starting to feel an urge to go empty her bladder and bowel. Thus, it just didn't seem like a climax comfortably reached was in her cards at the moment. She was just going to have to hope that either these two were gone by the time she had come back from the latrine or she would have another moment all to herself sometime in the near future.

Thus, she simply got up, straightened and fastened her clothes properly, and headed out. Upon jumping down from the wagon, she looked over her shoulder to glare daggers at the backs of the men standing up on the wall.

Those two weren't her only problem, though. In order to get to the latrine, she had to go past the barracks, where the rest of the soldiers were loitering. Now sans Trevor, they seemed to be playing some other kind of gambling game, this one played with dice. Sypha pretended not to even notice them as they raised their heads to quietly leer at her, but inside her head, she was egging them on: 'Do it. Do it! Go ahead, say it!'

And indeed, one of the soldiers, older than the rest, did speak up.

'Your _partner_ is trimmin' his beard in the barracks,' he drawled. Clearly, he found Trevor's use of the word ”partner” rather funny.

In response Sypha, who had just gone past the man, stopped and looked at him over her shoulder.

'Oh. Is he?' she chirped, trying to sound blissfully ignorant.

Unfortunately for the Speaker, the soldiers sensed danger. The expression of the man who had spoken up grew more stern, guarded, whilst his younger comrades hastily averted their eyes from the powerful mage. Annoyed, not understanding what had tipped them off, Sypha glowered at them all for a moment, then kept going. Just about when she was going out of earshot, she thought she _might_ have heard the soldiers snickering quietly, but... no, that didn't even warrant looking behind her.

Once she was truly too far from the soldiers to hear them, Sypha clicked her tongue in disappointment – she hadn't gotten to go off on them. It would have been an acceptable payback for disturbing her privacy and for even considering stealing from people who had saved them, not to mention for all the times when her family had been harassed. Of course, these particular men playing dice couldn't have been blamed for any of that, but the aura they exuded was all the same and it made Sypha's hackles bristle: it was that feel of a naughty little brotherhood of _cheeky lads_. The kind that would have jumped at the opportunity to ”joke around,” ”have a bit of a giggle” at her expense should she have been Danai or, hell, Raela or Cedna.

Oh, if only she would have had the chance to catch them in the act. She would have definitely rewarded each sneering, insolent face with a permanent handprint branded across the cheek. Sure, they would have come up with some sob story for anyone who asked how they'd gotten them, but they themselves would have forever known what they had done to deserve them.

With these thoughts, Sypha finally crossed a line inside her own head, alerting her inner projection of her grandfather. She felt his hand on her shoulder once more, coaxing her to relent – she was being too harsh and eager for confrontation, the old man's voice told her. She ought to give these men a chance at least. And even if they didn't have much good in their hearts, she should have held the safety of Athon and his family as a top priority – the precarious peace between them and these soldiers was best preserved until everyone had gotten away. And she was better than this anyway – she was just being exceedingly frustrated and irritable at the moment because of the circumstances.

As oftend tended to be the case, the mage reluctantly reckoned her imagined proxy of her grandfather was right. She took a deep calming breath and tugged her own leash, purged her mind of fantasies of serving swift justice with a sharp tongue and her arsenal of spells. Indeed, she was being ridiculous: the world's ills weren't going to be fixed or necessarily even lessened by picking a fight with some soldiers. She was just hankering for something to vent her frustrations on.

With that, Sypha had once again thwarted her beastlier tendences. She went to the latrine, came out feeling refreshed, confirmed that the soldiers on the wall hadn't budged, and then thought about what she was going to do next. She could have remedied her loneliness and boredom by going to see Trevor groom himself, or... she could do the unexciting thing of allowing him his peace whilst she made bread. The latter wasn't the least bit attractive to her at the moment, which was exactly why she had a feeling it was what she ought to do. Her impulse control wasn't at its best, after all.

Thus, on the way to the wagon to get the flour and the oil, she couldn't help but to stop by the soldiers again, this time asking them as sweetly and innocently as possible if she could use the kitchen inside the keep. To her annoyance, the men seemed more disturbed than tempted by this – the oldest one just stammered a rather stiff 'Yes, of course' in response while the others remained silent.

Cowards.

And so Sypha spent the next two hours or so leisurely making flatbread. She daydreamed about leaving, actually reaching her caravan, and getting to experience more involved forms of intimacy with her partner than handholding. Kissing him had been nice and sex, well, the thought of having sex with Trevor was starting to just feel... right. It wasn't just her being fine with it happening, she genuinely looked forward to finding out what he looked like without his clothes, what he enjoyed, how he looked and sounded when he was at the height of his pleasure. And if the tightness she felt in the bottom of her stomach when she tried to imagine things was any indication, that all was going to feel, hmm. _Special._

Lost in thoughts like these, Sypha was distracted enough to burn a couple of breads. The rest turned out alright, however, and her first and last bread always turned out weird anyway, so... whatever.

By the time she had finished up with the breads and taken them to the wagon, townsfolk had begun trickling back to the fort. Just as she climbed back out over the driver's seat, she halted in surprise: the geldings were coming out of the barbican, too. They weren't brought in by her partner, either, they were led by Danai and one of the twins, presumably Cedna. The older of the sisters waved and Sypha waved back hesitantly, then jumped down from the wagon. The magician walked up to her fellow Speakers calmly, pretending not to pay any attention to Athon, who was carrying Danai's baby, and Raela as they quietly sneaked by.

'So how's my robe now?' Sypha asked of the sisters aloofly as she accepted the horses' leads from them.

Danai grimaced a little. 'You'll see tomorrow morning,' she said quietly.

She gestured at Cedna that she was free to go before hastily changing the subject.

'So, uh, how were the bread wraps?' Danai asked somewhat awkwardly as her younger sister walked away. 'Not too bland, I hope? It was _crazy_ down there with all those people – we completely ran out of herbs!'

Sypha blinked a couple of times, confused. 'What people?' she asked.

Danai was a little taken aback. 'Did Belmont not tell you?' she questioned. 'Word got around that people are gathering at the caravan to sew clothes so dozens of women showed up with their own crafts. It turned into a giant potluck when they started bringing in ingredients with them, too...'

Oh. Well, that might have explained all the women walking into the fort looking so refreshed.

'Uhh, I... We've barely talked since I came back,' she stammered. 'Trevor has been training, I took a nap, then I made bread...'

'Oh,' Danai responded, ever so slightly disappointed and concerned.

Sypha sensed that her friend and sister would have liked to hear more but she didn't feel like talking about it. As a distraction, then, she relayed her message for Athon to Danai, telling about the soldiers and their plot to obtain ”donations.” This worked, thankfully, and upon sending the elder's daughter on a mission to get the word to her father, Sypha hurried to the stables. On the way there, she stuck her nose up and gave a knowing smug look to one of the soldiers in passing, which the man seemed confused by – it wasn't much but this amount of vindication just had to do, she supposed.

At the stables, the geldings got brushed down and put in their stalls to wait for their evening feed. With that done, the mage went back to the bailey, where she found that a bunch of townsmen had gathered to wait for the sunset. It was happening soon: the cloudy sky was ablaze but the colours of night were creeping in from the east.

'Has anyone seen Trevor?' Sypha asked of some men near the stable doors.

They turned their heads to give her a bored look. One of them took the time to point at one of the two towers built adjacent to the barbican.

'The Belmont's up there,' he said.

'Thanks,' Sypha said and headed towards the tower through the bailey.

Once she had climbed to the top of the tower, she found Trevor and some soldiers standing next to the crenellations with their backs turned to the stairs, murmuring and muttering amongst each other. As she ascended the final steps, a couple of the soldiers looked over their shoulders at her, as indifferent as anyone could be, then simply looked ahead. Sypha hardly felt welcome now that it was just ”the boys” again but she wasn't daunted, either. She just made her way to her partner, greeting him as she pushed her way to his side.

'Hey,' she said, 'I took the horses to the stables.'

Trevor looked to his side at her, a little surprised. 'Okay,' he then grunted and turned his attention to the town once more.

Sypha would have liked to have asked what, apart from having trimmed his facial hair, he had done while she had been frying bread. She didn't want to leave the soldiers with an impression that she didn't trust him or something, however. She was also very tempted to have a feel of Trevor's now very short, much tidier stubble. Alas... no.

And so, despite feeling like she was being undeservedly ignored, she merely waited, listening to terse exchanges between the men around her. This went on until one of the keen-eyed archers, proud that he had done so before the great vampire hunter, spotted movement in the town below and made his discovery known: the mermen were early.

'Well look at that,' Trevor said, amused and impressed, 'I guess the sky's overcast enough that they're feeling brave.'

That turned out to be debatable. The hunters and the soldiers waited and waited, with the dusk turning to the darkness of night, but the mermen just weren't coming up that hill. They kept disappearing behind the buildings for a while and then turning up at the square again, appearing to just bumble about aimlessly. They were so new to this town, it seemed, that they didn't even know it was empty.

This was very entertaining to watch at first but it got old pretty quick. Around the fourth time the mermen wandered off in the wrong direction, making their audience groan, Trevor gave up.

'Sypha,' he called out in an utterly bored tone of voice, staring down into the town with a bored and annoyed expression, 'would you like to accompany me for a pleasant nighttime stroll around town?'

The soldiers around the pair snickered at this. When Sypha glanced at them, though, they averted their gazes and became more serious. Had Trevor _told_ them something about her? Was that why they were so scared of her?

Anyway, the magician rolled her eyes and groaned as she returned her attention on the mermen. 'So bothersome...' she said with a sigh, then shrugged. 'Let's just go, I guess.'

The hunters descended from the tower, headed out, and walked downhill towards the town square. They did so quietly until Trevor finally spoke up.

'Oh yeah,' he began casually, then asked, 'I didn't tell you about the whole hubbub at the caravan, did I?'

Sypha snickered. 'You mean all those uninvited visitors they had?' she questioned. 'Danai told me about it.'

Trevor gave her a look. It was hard to tell at a glance what kind of look it was – thanks to the waning moon and thick clouds blanketing the night sky, it was very dark – but Sypha thought it might have been one of disappointment.

'Huh,' he said. 'Well, how were things on your end in the meantime, then?' he asked.

Sypha shrugged. 'It went well enough I guess. I disposed of the animals like I meant to,' she responded.

'Did those men give you any trouble?' the vampire hunter inquired.

'Eh,' Sypha responded dismissively, 'a little. They seemed to be under the impression that they have more experience burning dead bodies than I do, for some reason.'

Recounting her dealings with said men kept the hunters occupied until they reached the town proper. Approaching the first buildings, they quieted down and surveyed their surroundings carefully, lest they be jumped on by the mermen. At the town square, the hunters met them: there were four of them... and in roughly two minutes, there were none. The Morning Star made one explode, knocking two down to the ground, where Sypha incinerated them with a stream of intense flames. The fourth one was a bit further away and spat fire at them, but Sypha stopped its attack in its tracks. Trevor, meanwhile, smacked it in the face with the business end of his weapon.

As the last creature's remains splattered across the cobblestone, Sypha quickly looked around her whilst holding onto the flames of the creature's fire. Once she had made sure there weren't any others, she gathered all the fire into a hovering ball and brought it rather close to her chest.

'Brrr, it's getting cold out here,' she complained, her breath white with vapour.

'It must be, with clothes like that,' Trevor sneered and nodded at her and her halter top over his shoulder. He turned around and began looping the chain of his weapon into a neat coil as he said, 'You should hunker down with a blanket while I feed the boys. I've felt pretty useless all day.'

Sypha averted her gaze and looked around her at the town square, now somewhat lit by her ball of flame. Boy did she wish the town wasn't completely empty at the moment... she was really hankering for something to distract her. She was having the post-fight jitters, feeling like she had too much energy to burn to stay still, and she hated the thought of just sitting in the wagon, longing to snuggle up to her unwilling partner for warmth.

'Actually...' she began just as the vampire hunter had gathered the rest of his chain. 'I think I would rather stretch my legs a little. Have an actual walk?'

Trevor looked up from his weapon and cocked his brow doubtfully at her.

'Who knows – maybe I'll catch some more mermen?' the magician suggested. 'As long it's less than, I don't know, ten, I shouldn't have any problem with them even if I'm by myself, right?'

Her partner folded his arms across his chest with Morning Star still in one hand.

'You want to go on a walk around town, in this cold-as-fuck, pitch black night, _alone_ ,' he ascertained.

Sypha shrugged. 'Seems fine to me. I can light my way, keep myself warm, and defend myself,' she listed. Then she scoffed, 'Unless, of course, this town has suddenly become a hotspot for those hardened criminals you insist I have no defence against.'

Trevor shrugged back. 'Suit yourself, I guess,' he spoke with resignation and hung his weapon on his belt. 'Don't take all night, though... I might send those soldiers you love so much to rescue you if you do,' he said dryly, then turned around.

Sypha clicked her tongue and rolled her eyes. 'Yeah, yeah...' she sneered.

With that, the vampire hunter walked away from her, back towards the fort. His partner stayed in place for a while, just watching him become a small dark blob against a slightly paler dirt road, then shook her head and turned to look at her surroundings again. She shuddered and held her ball of flame closer to her, then took a step forward. She walked through the cobblestone square to one of the partially paved streets that led away from it, lighting the façades of the surrounding buildings with the orange glow from her magic-fueled fire.

She ended up wandering to the gate that led to the broken bridge. Since it was firmly closed, she was about to make a turn, maybe go back already, but then she had an idea. The other side of the river was just a skip and a hop away from here, wasn't it? She could just fly there. There was probably nothing particularly interesting out there, but at least she hadn't been there before.

After considering the risks and benefits of this for, well, maybe five seconds, she decided to just go for it. She stopped feeding her little ball of flame, letting it sizzle out, and instead blasted fire from her both hands, lifting her up in the air. She was soon over the gate, and almost as quickly, over the river. In the light generated by the flames underneath her, she landed at the very beginning of the broken bridge on the other side.

Then, when her magical fire was snuffed out, she found herself standing in near complete darkness, in a place the layout of which was unknown to her.

The sudden suspense she felt was electrifying, making her hair stand on end, even though she suspected that there wasn't actually much to be excited about. She could only very barely make out the outlines of some buildings around her and far above them, there was a faint smudge of light where the waning crescent moon shone behind the thick clouds. Apart from the wind rustling among grass growing on the river bank and her own breaths, there were no sounds Sypha could hear. Not until she made herself another ball of fire, which emitted a constant quiet rushing sound with the occasional crackle.

In the light of the fire, the magician confirmed her hunch: there was little around her that was of any interest. Around her was just a wide open area until there were some more urban buildings on both sides of the wide road from the bridge that cut through town. Sypha began following it eastward, surveying her surroundings carefully, ready for anything the night had to throw at her.

Soon, she was past the tightly spaced two-storied buildings and starting to see thatched roofs, fenced gardens separating buildings, and a lot more sheds and shacks. Apart from burnt down buildings, knocked down fences, the complete lack of light in windows, and the silence, the place seemed rather normal.

And then, suddenly, Sypha heard a noise, a short sharp huff, from a worryingly close distance. She swiveled her head in its direction as quick as she could but that very nearly wasn't enough: by the time she laid her eyes on what was coming at her, it was nearly filling her field of vision. It wasn't big but it was in the air, at eye level, and coming right at her face! It emitted a sound that was something between a snarl and a raspy squeal, very loud in Sypha's ear as she dodged to the side, squealing in alarm herself.

Without stopping to wonder what she had been attacked by, she chucked her ball of flame at her assailant. A fraction of a second too late, she realised this hadn't been the smartest thing to do: she could have easily missed and left herself without a light to even see that in! She was lucky, however, because when she hastily replaced her light source, she saw the last wriggles of her attacker as it lay on the dirt road on its side, as much of its body covered in blisters as singed dark fur. And what was it? A rat nearly the size of a cat, it seemed. First disturbed, then relieved, the magician breathed a deep sigh and prepared to walk on.

Unfortunately, this commotion had attracted the attention of something bigger. Again, Sypha could hear it before she could see it: the first few huffs, grunts, and heavy footfalls came from the same direction as the rat had come from. Sypha gave the woven branch fence only the briefest of glances: she could sense that it and a few paces were the only thing separating her from something huge. Sure enough, when the mage began bounding away like a startled hare, that something let out a loud demonic scream and charged through the fence.

Sypha heard the crash but didn't look behind her to see what had come through. She hadn't even taken her fire ball with her, so she was as good as blind on the dark road. This was an extremely bad position to be in, she knew, and so, when she deduced from the frustrated grunts and the creaking and snapping of wood that whatever had attacked her was struggling to get itself fully through the fence, she wasted no time in going on the offensive. She began making a hand signal whilst she was still running, completing it by the time she stopped. She waved her hand at the ground as she spun around and with a blue flash, the dirt road between her and her attacker became coated with a smooth layer of ice.

Meanwhile, the hulking mountain of flesh had just managed to get back on its feet, ready to charge again, shrieking. It began to run, shedding the last pieces of the broken fence as it did so. Its limbs completed two galloping motions, pushing it forward quickly, but the third one was a bit wobbly: it had already reached the slippery ice. The fourth one was wobblier still, and during the fifth one, one of the creature's four limbs lost its footing and the rest were quick to follow. The creature took a tumble, falling to its knees and skidding forward a short distance before coming to a halt.

While it struggled to get up on the slippery ice, Sypha made a forceful gesture that ended with her crossing her forearms. A cluster of ice spikes erupted from beneath the creature, penetrating its abdomen and lifting it off its feet. The attacker let out a loud cry that tapered off as strength escaped its body. Its legs flailed uselessly in the air for a moment but grew more limp with each beat of the creature's heart, pumping blood into its ruptured organs.

Sypha's own heart beat like mad as she watched this, still prepared to fight or flee. When she realised she had won and wrestled her consciousness away from her intense focus on survival alone, she lit another floating flame and approached her enemy to have a closer look at it. She was shocked when she saw it for what it was: a _pig_ _._ Having apparently been made to grow by the river's curse, it was the biggest one she had ever seen, with thick curved tusks like the horns of a cow, but it was still just a pig. Sypha felt a bit bad for it as she stared into its brown eyes, saw the last sparks of life in them fade.

After a moment, she shuddered and walked away from her kill. This... just wasn't as fun without Trevor and his witty remarks to lighten the mood. And she'd had enough excitement for one night too, she supposed.

With that decided, the huntress slinked somewhat sheepishly back to the broken bridge. After looking around her and even taking a peek down into the river from the bridge for good measure, she took to the air once again. She flew over the water and the town gate without problem, just like before, and landed safely inside the town proper. Suddenly, the boringly familiar side of the river was feeling mighty cozy.

Sypha was still on edge, though, as she walked through the dry dusty streets back towards the fort. Sypha kept an eye on the rubble and the clutter left against the sides of the buildings, as if expecting more rats to come out. None were emerging, however, and so eventually, she let out a deep sigh, breathing out a particularly large cloud of vapour, and looked up at the sky instead. When the vapour dissipated, it revealed... nothing. The overcast sky was just dark apart from the pale blotch showing where the moon was hiding behind the clouds.

Sypha kept looking at this blotch wistfully, once again feeling like it was her strongest connection to her family. Her precious little birds of the sky were huddling together for warmth higher up in the mountains, she bet. Were they going to be proud, in their own sad way, when the little wildling they had raised returned to them red in tooth and claw, before disappearing into the wilderness once again? She hoped so.

After a deep sigh, Sypha looked down from the clouds to the lifeless streets. 'None of us are unlike animals,' huh? After having fought her worst tendencies all day, she sure felt like one. Perhaps that was the true reason why she had found a suitable mate in Trevor, of all people.

A blush crept on the magician's cheeks as she thought about the pickle she was in. She hadn't even been apart from him, really, yet she missed his scent, his touch, that lovely tension that had been between them the day before. Meanwhile, he didn't seem like anything was testing his resolve to not lay his hands on her, not even a little bit. As if she wanted and needed it a whole lot more than he did. As if he, in fact, wasn't that into her in the first place.

Sypha flinched and shook her head. No! She was being ridiculous again. This was just her self-control and better judgment taking a break. She would think about this issue very differently the next day, when they finally got on the road again and made progress towards Lacul Vulturilor. Trevor was just... weirdly good at suppressing his carnal desires. He had said it himself, hadn't he? That they had led him to trouble so he'd had to learn to be less eager.

Having convinced herself of this once again, Sypha straightened her back and walked with brisker strides, her head held high. She was going to make it to the caravan without making a fool of herself. She wasn't going to be overly needy, clingy, or demanding, she wasn't going to pathetically beg her partner to show her that her feelings were reciprocated. She was secure in her knowledge that she was an exceptional specimen when it came to looks, intelligence, skill, and strength, and that her ragged stray lion had little else going for him.

It was a bit of a rain on her parade and a dent in her pride, then, that when she came to the fort, she found the entrance closed. The night guard must have seen her walk up the hill, what with her magic having been the only source of light down there, yet they didn't seem to be in any hurry to do anything about this. They were counting on her just flying over the walls so they didn't need to bother opening up, weren't they? What a disrespectful way to treat a hero!

The magician muttered a few non-intelligible curses and insults, then let out an exasperated sigh and extinguished her ball of flame. She could have stood there shouting up at them until someone came down to let her in, she supposed, just to make a point, but that would have taken more time. She indeed just flew instead, but with a catch for the sods standing on the wall, watching her: she flew over a couple of them deliberately low, making them duck to avoid the streams of fire propelling her forward. Served them right, even if she felt the twist of her grandfather's imaginary judgment in her guts.

Also, just for the extra flair, she made her landing special, too. Once she reached the bailey, she brought her descent to a full stop with a quick, intense pulse of fire that she hoped would leave a big old scorch mark on the ground as a memento. As soon as she had been brought to a halt, she let herself drop the height of a couple of stairsteps. After her dainty, immaculate landing, she strutted to the wagon in an unhurried manner.

Upon getting close to the vehicle by the wall, though, she softened her steps. She climbed onto it in a gingerly fashion, careful not to make it shake or creak too much – Trevor could have been asleep already, after all.

Crossing over the driver's seat, however, she saw that this wasn't the case. In the light of the tiny magical flame she had created to see in the nearly pitch black shade of the canvas cover, she got startled by the sight of the vampire hunter swiveling his head to look at her. It wasn't just that she had expected him to be asleep, it was that he was doing it from such an awkward angle: his feet were pointing away from her so he was effectively looking up from the corner of his eye. The hemp bag full of random items that he was using as a pillow was hardly helping.

'H-... Hey,' Sypha greeted him, recovering from the small shock.

Realising she didn't need to be conservative with light, she increased the size of her dim flame, no bigger than a coin.

'Did I wake you up?' she asked.

'You did, actually,' Trevor responded casually and returned to looking up at the hole-riddled canvas cover above. 'For a moment there, I thought we're being attacked by some fire-breathing night creature.'

Sypha cringed – it must have been her landing. 'Oops. Sorry,' she apologised with a mutter, 'that was just me flying over the wall.'

Then, averting her eyes from her partner, she was immediately reminded of another oopsie: the clothes she had borrowed from the innkeeper's wife were still on top of the wooden box where she had left them.

'Agh! I forgot to return these...' she groaned and, for no particular reason, moved the clothes an inch or two and gave them a singular annoyed pat. 'I have to remember to return them first thing in the morning.'

Trevor hemmed quietly, just to signal that her frustration was registered.

Meanwhile, Sypha looked around the now well lit wagon and noted that all their blankets had been rolled out – that was why Trevor was using such an uncomfortable improvised pillow. Meanwhile, he had left a more comfortable-looking black cloth, thick and thickly folded, to support her head. Hardly a declaration of undying love, but it was something, right? Except... what was it, exactly?

'What is this?' Sypha asked and pointed at the folded cloth with her toes.

Trevor glanced at it briefly and snorted.

'One of Dracula's cloaks,' he said casually.

'Really?' Sypha responded in a scoffing, somewhat incredulous tone. 'You actually went and stole one?' she questioned.

'I did,' Trevor admitted in a boastful tone. 'He had a whole closet full of them – Alucard's not going to notice one of them missing.'

Sypha was going to argue but then, she realised: all she was doing was being kind of grumpy and gripey, wasn't she? That wasn't a good look at the moment, was it. Thus, she just swallowed her objections and let her shoulders slump, resigned, before she leaned forwards and reached down to take her sandals off.

'So... Did you have a nice walk?' the vampire hunter asked. 'Did you catch any mermen?'

'It was, uh, cold!' the magician answered whilst she loosened the leather straps. 'Also, there were no mermen, but I got attacked by a pig.'

'A pig?' Trevor repeated. 'Where?'

'On the other side of the river,' Sypha told him innocently.

Her partner hemmed. 'You would've been in major trouble If something had happened to you out there, you know,' he pointed out. 'Crossing that stinking river would have been the last thing I would have thought to do if you hadn't turned up back here.'

'Well, it's a good thing I can down a single pig with no trouble, then,' Sypha quipped back, still leaned over. No reason to mention that she had also nearly gotten her face shredded by a giant rat, was there?

Once she had removed her sandals, she placed them aside. She then lifted the edge of the two blankets that she and Trevor shared – the third one was spread underneath them to keep them off of the cold wagon floor – and, without second thought, slid underneath the covers, next to her partner. This prompted him to turn to his side, with his back towards her. She very dearly wanted to spoon him but no, back against back it was. She curled up next to him and drew her limbs close to keep them warm, shuddering.

'Would be nice to have that robe now,' she mumbled bitterly whilst she waved her hand under the covers to snuff out the ball of fire that floated above her. The wagon suddenly became pitch black.

'Come to think of it, I don't think I saw a single scrap of that thing at the caravan,' Trevor said, not seeming to care that the light had disappeared. 'Hope it still exists,' he added.

'I'm hoping for the best, prepared for the worst,' the magician sneered, blinking and squinting as her eyes struggled to get used to the dark. 'I am _not_ going to take one of their own robes, I don't want this story _accidentally_ morphing into me bullying one off of them. Our caravan should have a spare one and Uncle Sileon's group might have one as well.'

Sypha was going to go on muttering about this but she held her tongue – again with the negativity! And about her own people, too! She ought to just shut up before she started whinging about the soldiers too, she supposed, and so she breathed out a calming breath, determined to just relax, let Trevor decide whether to continue their pillow talk or not. It took a couple of minutes of silence but he did, eventually, speak up.

'Hey Sypha...' he began.

'Yes?' the magician responded, relieved that he was talking.

Trevor's question proceeded to be so casually presented, it threw her off: 'What do you see in me?'

'What?' Sypha said, confused, even though she had heard and understood her partner just fine.

'What do you see in me?' Trevor repeated. 'What's the draw for you? Between mild and boring Speakers and rugged soldiers, there should be a lot to choose from.'

Realising that Alucard had been right in predicting this question, Sypha breathed a sigh in defeat and let out a soft nervous chuckle.

'Oh no... I've been dreading this question,' she admitted.

'What for?' Trevor grunted.

Sypha grimaced, then smirked faintly. She shifted her position to give her enough room to roll on her back and look at her partner. Not that there was much to look at except a black blob in the darkness where the back of the man's head was. But still, the sight of him made her feel perplexingly warm and fuzzy inside.

'Well, what if my answer gets to your head and you get cocky?' she scoffed. 'Can't have that, can we?'

The vampire hunter hemmed. 'Try me,' he told her without looking at her.

Sypha let out a short relieved sigh. It was a good thing Alucard had warned her, after all – she had thought about this so much but now, it wasn't hard to go over her best established reasons and put them to words.

'Well, Trevor, apart from those mild and boring Speakers, how many of my options are going to be fine with me being a Speaker?' she asked.

She paused for a brief moment as the warm and fuzzy feeling in her stomach turned into a squirming unease. Going with this dispassionate rational answer felt almost like lying even though it was as true as her more... _volatile_ feelings.

She forced herself to go on. 'How many of them are going to be fine with me being a practitioner of magic?' she asked. 'And treat me like an equal? Not demand me to be a humble, modest homemaker?' she listed.

An affectionate grin played on her lips. She softened her voice to a degree where it was almost childlike.

'And how many of them are silly and fun to tease?' she asked coyly. 'Like a big goofy dog?'

She clenched her hands underneath the covers as she watched and listened to her dear beast shift, clearly a little annoyed. More than anything, Sypha wanted to reach for him with her hands. Fluster him by stroking his hair, his shoulder, his side, by exhaling a hot breath against his neck. She was about to list more of his good qualities instead, but then Trevor said something a little surprising.

'Well... there's Alucard,' he blurted out.

Sypha let out a sharp breath through her nose, endeared that he would make that suggestion.

'Alucard has his own world, Trevor,' she explained gently. 'He enjoys spending hours and hours quietly designing and building it. I admire his devotion and skill, but... I wish to travel, be part of the bigger world, have a direct impact on it that I can see and feel. Yet, I wouldn't feel right dragging someone who finds so much comfort in sophisticated machines and such conveniences into a world that doesn't have any. Where people see him as less than human, even.'

Sypha stopped to listen for the vampire hunter's reaction. He let out a short, contemplative hum, then let a heavy silence linger between them. He broke it by raising his hand to scratch his neck and by speaking up in a low rumble.

'So... what you're saying is, you think you and I are _compatible_ ,' he said.

The mage swallowed. He hadn't sounded thrilled enough to her liking just now. She did some soul searching, thinking about the feelings she had struggled with earlier.

'It's more than that,' she said quietly. 'Trevor, I,' she tried to go on but then, she scrapped her thought and started over. She knew it was a tall order, but she wanted to say something without actually saying it, cut to the heart of the issue without directly addresing it.

In a calm, steady voice, she told her partner, 'It was exciting to see you become whole during our journey, Trevor.'

Yes, that seemed fine. Speaking the truth like this, with such detachment, in such a roundabout way, she didn't feel like she was making herself too vulnerable.

'It was exciting partly because... I feel like it happened to me, too,' she confessed. She explained, 'Living with my family, I felt so long like I'm bumping up against a ceiling I just can't break through. There was something missing. And I feel like I found it on our mission.'

She knitted her brows, feeling like her confidence was fleeing her. She whipped it back to shape before speaking up again.

'But what I've realised is, I really am not done,' she stated. 'I want to keep growing. I want to become stronger and wiser in a way I couldn't with my family.'

She softened her voice a little. 'And I feel like I can do that with you,' she said.

She chuckled quietly. 'You've already rubbed off onto me, I think,' she admitted, her bashful smile audible. 'Me putting my foot down with Uncle and Auntie yesterday, me trying to do that again today, the only Speaker I've ever done that with before is Arn, and that's because he does that to me. Without your influence, I don't think I would've done it, but I'm glad I did. It's been a long time coming.'

Trevor, who had been still and silent all this time, suddenly jerked a little. 'Oh,' he said, sounding genuinely a little surprised.

Sypha raised an eyebrow. She conceded, 'So what I'm saying here, I don't think you were _wrong_ with what you said about me and going to India, not completely.'

She frowned a bit, now feeling like she was swinging too far towards submissiveness.

'But, the way you put it was _awful_ ,' she added a little bitterly. 'I feel like there's quite a bit of growing for you to do, too.'

To this, the vampire hunter said, barely in understandable human words, something like 'Yeah, sure, it's fine.' Clearly he was so distracted by his own thoughts he had barely even listened.

Sypha rolled her eyes at this and the two fell quiet. Then, about perhaps half a minute later, something dawned on her that made her ten times more annoyed. She had said so much to reassure him that she wanted to be with him, but... what about _her?_ Was he not going to say anything about why he wanted to be with her, anything at all? He wasn't, was he! This had to be corrected immediately.

'So Trevor,' she began in a clear voice, just to make very sure he was paying attention.

Alas. When she tried to come out with her question, she opened her mouth and... closed it again. Some part of her balked at asking. It just didn't feel right. Why did she have to do it in the first place? She had exposed so much of herself and her people to his cynical scrutiny recently, some of it involuntarily but much of it by her own volition. And she had put so much thought and care into the answer she had given just now, too. It should have been obvious that he ought to have said something in return, without having to be milked for it.

To this, the inner projection of her grandfather finally let out an exasperated sigh and, once again, began patiently appealing to her rational side. Surely she already knew: she couldn't expect Trevor to just know, read her mind and do what she wanted him to do, without her telling him. He had lived a solitary life, one of strife that had taught him to be tough and insensitive – he was new to this. Especially since they had only been together as a couple for what, _five days?_ And if she thought she could go without the reassurance that she was liked, she was kidding herself – she was at a massive deficit of validation and she knew it.

Sypha swallowed. Rationally speaking, she knew she should have just asked. She was sure Trevor would have given it to her straight should she have done that. Yet, be it because she was dreading his answer or because she was in a childish mood, she just... couldn't. And the clock was ticking, it was only getting more and more awkward to follow up with her question. Knowing that she had, once again, been defeated in a way, she ended up letting out a hopeless sigh.

'… Never mind,' she said quietly.

She rolled onto her back, wriggled her way a bit closer to her partner, then rolled on her other side. There, now she was with her back against his, again, just the way he wanted. And no, he said or did absolutely nothing about it. He didn't even bid her good night and now, she wasn't going to, either.

Instead, Sypha held her hands close to her chest, closed her eyes, and took a slow, calming breath. Everything was going to be better the next day, she promised herself. Everything was going to look a little brighter, she was going to be a lot smarter, she was going to be more patient and lovable and fun. Her better angels weren't going to fail her two days in a row. She was going to grow as a person, as a Speaker, as a beast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The great thing about imagining what demonic pig screams sound like is that all you need to do is recall any high-pitched sound made by pretty much any monster in any audiovisual media and you're there.


	15. Finally Getting Somewhere

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, life kicked my arse for a bit, later chapters have gone through the bloats and splits, and I wasn't satisfied with the previous chapter so I revised it. Little about the sequence of plot-relevant events has changed, mostly just the feel and tone or what Sypha is going through.

The next morning, Trevor finally got his revenge. He woke up with the sun, feeling unusually crisp, and this time, the first step of his plan didn't wait until he took a piss, not even until his morning stiffy went away.

'Rise and shine, Sypha,' he stated plainly as he pushed himself up.

Whilst he rubbed his eyes, the magician made something of a noise but didn't stir. Trevor glanced at her, wondering if she was actually awake – she was sort of hiding her face behind her hands and wrists. Regardless, he got up and walked to the front of the wagon, where he leaned over the driver's seat to have a look around the bailey. The night guard, or morning guard if they had switched, was on the walls of the fort but other than that, there was nobody up and about. He couldn't say shy cock was a malady he suffered from but he was grateful anyway as he got down and took a piss next to the fort wall.

Upon returning, he expected Sypha to have woken up but to his delight, she was still sleeping, like a damn baby.

 _'Sypha_ ,' he said in a scolding tone whilst he walked past her with noisy steps, 'it's morning. We get to leave, remember?'

This time, the woman actually moved, rolling on her back. Trevor glanced at her over his shoulder as he turned to the water barrel, noting that she was squinting at the canvas above. She said nothing whilst he lifted the lid of the barrel and took a drink with a ladle. He had a bad feeling about this, which turned out to be entirely warranted when he turned back around and found her lying with her eyes closed once again.

'Sypha...' Trevor called out one more time. 'You know I don't need magic to splash you with water, right? There's a whole barrelful of it right here.'

He also poked her hip with the toe of his boot for good measure. This, finally, made the magician jerk and open her eyes, looking annoyed.

'Are you kicking me?' she asked irately, sitting up clumsily whilst glaring at the foot he had just done the deed with.

'I am _nudging_ you with my _foot_ ,' Trevor enunciated to correct her, then folded his arms across his chest. He leered down at the woman smugly as he urged her, 'Now get on with it, will you?'

Sypha got up grumbling and goodness, it was as if Trevor had scratched an unreachable itch – he almost felt like he had gotten up on the right foot. Travel preparations felt like a cinch too.

Things took a turn, however, when the Speakers arrived to the bailey and approached the wagon nervously. Having just brought the geldings out of the stables, Trevor watched as Sypha tensed and abandoned the harnesses she was untangling, then took a few steps towards her people. Athon, Stana, and Raela came forth to meet her, with the adolescent daughter between them staring stubbornly at the stack of clothes she was carrying rather than Sypha. The beleaguered parents watched with bated breath as their girl handed the clothes to her senior.

'Sorry for burning your robe,' Raela apologised quietly.

The look in Sypha's eyes was cold at first but her expression quickly softened.

'You're forgiven, Raela. Thank you,' she said and accepted the stack. The mage tilted her head to the side a little to give it a questioning look since it clearly contained more garments than just her presumed robe.

'I'm so sorry I... wasn't able to make a full robe with the amount of fabric left,' Stana admitted solemnly. 'The best we could do isn't as warm as a full robe, so I included some warmer clothes to go under it...'

Sypha nodded with a faint, sympathetic smile. 'It's fine, Auntie. Thank you,' she thanked the embarrassed older woman.

Lastly, the young mage turned to Athon, who appeared the most tense and somber of all. He moved with utmost reluctance and deliberation when he stepped up from behind his daughter in front of Sypha, placed his both hands on her shoulders, looked her straight in the eye, and spoke.

'You have my deepest apologies, Sypha, for my handling of all this,' he said in a low, resonant voice. 'Please know that no matter how different our visions for the future of the Speakers are, I harbour you no ill will. I wish, more than anything, that it was possible for both of us to have our wish come true. And wherever you may go and whatever you make of your life, I wish you nothing but happiness, always.'

Sypha nodded to him as well. 'I know, Uncle,' she responded sadly.

The two shared a tight hug.

'Stay safe, Scholar of legend,' Athon told his fellow Speaker while patting her back. 'Say hello to your family for me.'

'I will,' Sypha promised.

The rest of the Speakers bid their tender farewells afterwards. Realising that the heroes were leaving, other townsfolk started to gather as well, and so a crowd formed. One of the soldiers handed them a small sack of supplies to keep them going – flour, lard, garlic, dried fish, candles and rushlights. It was all appreciated.

What had become of Sypha's robe was, too, to an extent. She put it on whilst the soldiers were exchanging a few words with Trevor, who was observing her from the corner of his eye. The magician gazed somewhat wistfully at the light, sleeveless, hoodless mantle that her robe had become reduced to, smoothing the front of it and adjusting the Speakers' customary bird-like pin that had migrated to her left shoulder. She seemed to accept it. Trevor, meanwhile, had one complaint about the garment but he wasn't going to say it: it didn't offer as tantalising a peek at the neck and collarbone area as the original robe had done.

Soon enough, the hunters got up on the driver's seat of their wagon, with Sypha taking the reins. They waved the Speakers and the cheering townsfolk goodbye as they drove through the bailey to the barbican. The hunters exchanged sidelong looks as they drove through the gates, as if expecting a disaster to strike before they were fully out.

Nothing happened, however. Almost in disbelief, the heroes gave each other another look, smirking at each other with tentative optimism – maybe their luck really was turning? Neither one asked this aloud, however, lest they jinx it, but they were both thinking it. Instead of that, Sypha spoke about the ample gifts they had received.

'I wasn't the only one who received new clothes, you know,' she told Trevor casually over the rattling of the wagon wheels.

'Oh?' the Belmont heir responded, sensing shenanigans. 'And what did _I_ get?'

Sypha snickered. 'Well, when I went to return that dress to the innkeeper's wife, she handed me, get this: a sack of underwear! She and some other women patched them up for us at the caravan yesterday.'

'Huh,' Trevor said in response, knowing full well more was to come.

'And do you know why?' the Speaker questioned.

The vampire hunter rolled his eyes. 'No. Why?' he asked obediently, but in a begrudging tone.

'Well, as she told me,' Sypha answered and then, valiantly but ultimately quite poorly, tried to mimic the innkeeper's wife's accent, ' _Nothin' as foul in the world as a fella who don't change his breeches, love! An' he don't look like one who got a lotta spares!'_

Trevor groaned and rolled his eyes again, harder.

'And that's not all!' Sypha continued matter-of-factly. 'Would you like to guess what else they included in their gift?'

'How about you just tell me?' Trevor asked.

Sypha answered in a lower, almost ominous tone under her breath: 'Good luck charms for a safe and easy birth.'

Trevor side-eyed her and she responded with a knowing look. They stared at each other in silence for a moment until finally, the vampire hunter clicked his tongue and scoffed at the audacity.

'God,' he huffed as he returned his attention to the road, 'I can't wait to get out of this fucking-'

 _'Don't,'_ his partner ordered him like he was a misbehaving child. 'You'll jinx it.'

He didn't. With no trouble at all, the geldings pulled the wagon downhill into the town, then through the town to the northernmost gate. Trevor did, however, mischievously threaten to get going and leave his partner behind in this town she loved so much when she abandoned the reins to get out and open the gate. The magician gave him a dirty look when she climbed back up, Trevor grinned as he handed the reins back to her, then they had a chuckle over it.

Off they went again. The wagon rolled through the ever sparser and more rural circle of houses around the town proper, towards the remains of what had been a dense forest not too long ago. Now, it was a hellscape of a wholly different kind, one that filled the hunters with awe once they had an unobstructed view of it.

'Wow. Now I'm half expecting the rain to come down as blood,' Trevor said as his gaze panned across the scorched earth.

The still very red river snaked through the gently undulating valley, which was now lifeless and blackened with soot. The occasional tree still stood, charred to the very top, but most had been reduced to stumps of varying heights. With no bushy undergrowth, no hazy miasma trapped under treetops, the sight of the dead trees dotting the landscape stretched on and on until a narrow bottleneck in the valley obscured what lay beyond. Instead of the miasma, dark, oppressing clouds hung above the land, ready to burst with precipitation.

After a moment of studying this sight, Sypha stated offhandedly, 'If it really does rain blood, I'm going to make you pull the wagon to the next town.'

Trevor snorted. 'I didn't know you were this superstitious,' he remarked.

'Neither did I,' his partner responded, 'but I'll be whatever I have to be to get us out of here as fast as possible.'

'Making me pull the wagon is only going to do the opposite, though,' the vampire hunter pointed out.

Sypha did an annoyed double take. Instead of doing her usual acrobatics to get out of a corner she had painted herself in, she took the easy way out and just shushed her partner down. To her chagrin, this admission of defeat was duly noted, earning her a victorious cackle from Trevor.

'See? Not that nice to have this shite nitpicked, is it,' he sneered.

The impulse to show him his place flickered in the mage's eyes, yet she just rolled them and sighed.

Slowly but surely, they kept going forward. They could only drive short stretches at a time, not because they were dragged down by insects and bigger woodland creatures, but by tree limbs that had fallen on the road. They weren't difficult to get out of the way, especially once Sypha figured out she could use a burst of wind magic to push a lot of them aside at once, but having to constantly come to a halt and get down from the wagon did take time in addition to being just very tedious.

Eventually, the wagon rolled to the ford, where the hunters came across a familiar... well, not face, because it no longer had one. Pulled out of the water, the headless, once ice-encrusted carcass of the toad monster had melted in the heat but apart from its stretched out legs, it was largely untouched by fire. With its disturbingly human-like appearance, from an angle where its lack of head wasn't visible, it almost looked like a giant pudgy man who had wandered in after the fire and passed out by the road.

'Good riddance,' Sypha hemmed at the sight, disgusted.

Trevor spat at the carcass but other than that, the hunters didn't linger on the sight of it – they didn't want to breathe the fumes from the ford any longer than they had to. Though dispersed much more freely by winds, the fumes were still there, billowing over the red water, still curdled with red mucus. The site had been the site of their first and only kiss as though this may have been, the hunters hurried across and hardly looked back. The only thing they said that was even remotely in reference to the incident was a simple question from Trevor.

'Ready to do all that again?'

Sypha, not at all having expected this question as the geldings pulled them to the opposite bank of the river, scrambled, blushing a little, and stammered, 'W-what?'

Trevor nodded at the road and followed it with its gaze. It followed the river just like the road on the other side, and much like that one, it was long, riddled with debris, and led to the town they had just left, just the lesser half that they hadn't been to.

'We have to do that exact same trip going forward, won't we,' the vampire hunter reiterated unenthusiastically.

Sypha blinked a couple of times, during which the blush on her cheeks faded and her expression returned to neutral. 'Oh... right,' she said and turned her attention fully to the road.

The two continued driving, stopping, blasting and kicking away stuff off the road, and driving on again. When they finally reached the wholly abandoned part of town, it was such a surreal experience they had to stop the wagon near the beginning of the broken bridge to look across the river: they had gone so far and yet here they were again, a stone's throw away from the fort. On this side that had been so close, yet so inaccessible during their stay in town. Inaccessible to Trevor and anyone else who wasn't Sypha, anyway.

'You could fly out there to say hello one more time if you wanted to,' the vampire hunter pointed out to his partner.

'No thank you,' Sypha responded without hesitation whilst panning her gaze over the fortified town proper.

Trevor turned to her and held out his hands. 'Care to switch?' he asked and waited for the mage to give the reins to him.

After swapping drivers the two went on, turning left from the river, towards the eastern shoulder of the valley. They still had some town to get through and that wasn't entirely problematic, as the hunters quickly found out. More giant rats came out of the woodwork, threatening to make the geldings panic as they suddenly appeared and scurried towards their hooves. The monster hunters had to quickly jump down from the wagon to kill the critters before they did any damage.

Soon after that, they came across the pig that Sypha had killed. It was still held aloft by the cluster of melting ice spikes, with its behind pointed towards the wagon as it rolled by. While the mage would have been happy to just keep going, Trevor was so astonished by what he was seeing, he had to bring the geldings to a halt.

'Well bugger me,' he swore in awe. 'You killed the king of ham! Look at the _size_ of those things.'

'Trevor...' Sypha said in a somewhat admonishing tone.

'Alucard would turn green with envy if he saw this thing!' the vampire hunter gushed on mockingly. 'How is he supposed to corner the pork market if he's got competition like this? It looks like it's got two arses, for fuck's sake.'

'Trevor, please,' his partner pleaded with a hint of nervous laughter in her voice, now getting a little red in the face. 'I get it, they're huge – this poor thing was probably someone's prized breeder before it got corrupted. Can we just go already?'

The Belmont heir snickered and smirked at the embarrassed magician, who now wasn't sure where to look. Certainly not at the bulging pig testicles a couple of paces away from her, large enough to make the skewered dead boar look like its rump boasted an excess pair of rotund cheeks.

Trevor clicked his tongue. ' _Fine_ ,' he said, then asked the geldings to move once again.

A few maddened dogs and sheep later, the hunters had made their way through the remainder of the town. Surrounded by now empty pastureland, the trade route they followed began zig-zagging its way up towards the top of the western shoulder of the valley. The slope was gentle but climbed high enough to be a stiff climb for the geldings, needing a couple of small breaks before they had reached the highest point. Once up there, they needed another longer one, and so while they caught their breath, their masters jumped down from the wagon and had a look at the view.

It wasn't exactly beautiful but it sure was something. The empty pastures, the red river, the fort, both sides of the monster-battered town, the blackened remains of the forest, even the smudge of fumes where the ford was: they could see it all at once.

'Whew...' Sypha breathed out, standing with her arms akimbo as she had one last good look at the place. In a deceptively plain, jovial manner, she stated, 'I'm never, and I do mean ever, setting foot in that town again.'

Trevor turned his head to look at her. 'It was that bad, huh?' he questioned.

'Yes!' the mage answered without hesitation. 'Easily the worst time I've had since we reached the Hold.'

'Worse than being pummeled by Dracula?' Trevor asked, giving her a doubtful look.

'At least that was over quickly,' Sypha responded with a shrug. 'And he didn't want me to stay until he's made it up to me, did he?'

The vampire hunter snorted. 'Yeah, I guess you have a point,' he said half-jokingly.

Sypha shook her head and let out a short noisy breath. She chuckled mirthlessly and vowed, 'I swear, if Uncle Sileon's group gives us this much trouble, I'm really going to cut my ties and sell all the stories in my memory for a pittance.'

'Aren't they churning out new books like mad right now in the west?' Trevor asked. 'Maybe we should get on that. It probably wouldn't make us rich but surely we'd get _some_ money out of it.'

'Ehh...' Sypha responded, not too enthused. 'Let's sort things out in the east, first.'

And indeed, east they went. The scenery wasn't much different from before coming to the valley: they were constantly going either up or down a slope, occasionally coming across an empty shepherd's hut or a trickle of a stream that now ran dry thanks to the drought. With nothing much to look at, the hunters could only entertain themselves by talking.

And so, they began telling stories again. Sypha began with a tale of a foremother of hers, one who had discovered her natural gift for magic in a most tragic way: by accidentally burning down a village after having been brought there for a witch trial. After this, Trevor told a story of one of the many times he had nearly died. Once upon a time he had passed out in the woods and woken up to what he had thought to be a minotaur attacking him, only to have found out just a moment too late that he had just whipped a wisent bull. Said bull had then charged and had very nearly gored him in the armpit... Fun times.

Like this, the two passed the time much like they had done before, on the way to and from the village they had saved from flying nuisances. It really had been only that time that they had done this, yet to Trevor, this felt like a comforting return to normal. Almost like coming back home. Like stepping in through the great doors to the Belmont mansion, being greeted by the familiar servants, the familiar smells, and the sounds of vigorous training echoing down the corridor from the training hall. It was mysterious and bittersweet.

'You know Sypha...' he spoke out out of nowhere, in the middle of a lull between conversations. He looked wistfully into the distance, smiling faintly. 'This is nice. Definitely beats loitering around that town,' he admitted.

Sypha snickered softly. 'Doesn't it?' she said. 'It feels like forever since we've actually been on the road.'

Trevor chuckled and glanced at her. He averted his eyes quickly, fearing on some level that his partner was going to see that he had made an important decision, then ask him what decision that was. He had decided that he... was willing to give this thing with her a go. It all came down to what the mage had said the night before: somehow, it hadn't crossed his mind that something as simple as _teaching_ her how to make it out here by herself was an option. And the more he thought about it, the more he actually liked this idea. If she took to it well, Sypha wasn't going to struggle miserably and potentially die if she refused to go back to her family.

Fuck, some part of him was so convinced he must have drunk the river water and gone mad to seriously contemplate this, though. He didn't even feel like he was being led by his cock on this one – the genuine possibility that sex was on the table still didn't feel real to him. And, in the interest of telling Sypha the truth about his original intentions and negotiating what they were going to do, he supposed it was for the best that he didn't linger on that much, either. He dreaded this more than enough as it was.

So... how and when was he going to do this? To wait for a perfect moment was useless, he knew. Yet, looking at Sypha, he couldn't help but to feel like this was an especially bad time. Sypha was a little off and he had a feeling that it wasn't just the robe thing bothering her anymore.

'You okay, Sypha?' he inquired suspiciously after she had been quiet for a while. 'Does what happened with your people bother you still?'

The mage was sitting next to him, leaning against the backboard, arms folded underneath the new incarnation of her robe to keep herself warm. Appearing content and in good spirits, she was surprised and confused by her partner's sudden question.

'Umm...? A little, I guess,' she admitted. 'Why?'

Trevor shrugged. 'You're a bit... quiet, I suppose,' he said.

'Am I?' Sypha questioned, bemused. 'I guess it's time for another story, then.'

She began telling about a solomonar who had taught her magic at one time. Trevor listened carefully, observed her whenever he could afford to not look at the horses and the road, tried to figure out what about her was sticking out to him as abnormal. She looked fine, for the most part, but she was also too... inexpressive. She reminded him of how she had been after they had left Greşit to get to his home: suspiciously moderate, measured. _Focused_.

Come to think of it, what had been the thing that had tipped him off back then? He hadn't known Sypha very well yet. She had been focused then, too, but that wasn't it: that had been entirely reasonable in the circumstances. No, it had been more like... something about the way she had carried herself. An air of fatigue and unease, a sense of strained motionlessness. That look of an animal trying to hide it was ill, leading an existence revolving around discreetly avoiding a movement that caused discomfort. Was she like that now?

Trevor pondered at this in the back of his head whilst he observed his partner and listened to her story. Then, unexpectedly, it came to him: that movement she was trying to avoid. It was revealed when the Speaker finished her tale and stretched, reaching her arms as far above her head as they went, letting them fall, then simply tucking her hands back inside her mantle.

Seeing this, the realisation hit the man: Sypha wasn't touching him. She wasn't on the reins, yet she wasn't resting her head against his shoulder, hadn't done so this entire time that he'd been driving. There had been no hanging onto his arm, no curious stroke of his trimmed stubble, no playful poke of his cheek – she hadn't touched him _all day._

Having finally noticed this, he couldn't stop seeing it. It was like a piece of string being dangled in front of his face. Every time she fidgeted, every time she shifted her sitting position, every time she pulled her hand from underneath her mantle to do something only to put it right back, Trevor caught it from the corner of his eye and watched it curiously. Truly, she was a little stiff, looking like she was holding herself back.

Eventually, he just asked his partner quite straightforwardly, 'Why aren't you being all touchy-feely?'

Sypha, who had just turned away from him a little to rub her eye, turned back and gave him a bewildered look. 'What?' she questioned.

'You're not clinging to me like before,' Trevor elaborated. He jeered lightly, 'Did you get tired of me already?'

The mage balked a little. Then, a hint of annoyance marred her expression. 'I... yes,' she stammered, a little aloofly. Realising she wasn't showing herself in a most flattering light, she quickly sat up straighter, all elegant-like, and spoke with more poise, 'I don't feel like being touched _all_ the time, Trevor. Like right now, I don't particularly feel like it.'

After this, she, very disingenuously, batted her eyelashes and gave him a sweet demure look. She laid condescension thick as she cooed, 'But, if you _insist_ , if you need the touch of a woman that bad and are sure your manly essences won't be stirred too much by it, I will of course indulge you.'

Trevor narrowed his eyes and snorted. She thought she had him all figured out, didn't she? She thought that was going to rub him the wrong way and make him reel away from her. Well, it did irritate him, he gave her that, but what she was failing to see was: he was committed to this.

'Well,' he said and lifted his elbow, indicating without letting go of the reins that he would like to have something done about his arm. 'Come on then,' he urged his partner casually.

Trevor watched as the mage, utterly baffled, just looked down at his elbow for a moment. A flurry of emotional states were reflected briefly in her eyes, mainly confusion, annoyance, and apprehension. In a moment, however, she got ahold of herself and so she, with suspicious deliberation and poorly veiled reluctance, sat closer to the Belmont heir and slid her arm under his. She seemed rather uncomfortable as she settled down, staunchly avoiding looking at her partner. After this, they sat in awkward silence for a moment, with Trevor turning his attention back to the road and the horses.

'Really though,' he said as gently as was still audible over the rattling of the wagon wheels, 'is something wrong? Something other than what happened to your robe, I guess.'

'No,' Sypha answered plainly.

'Have I said something mean?' Trevor asked, not at all believing her.

'No!' the mage said again.

'Did your uncle's folk say something mean?'

Sypha let out a deep exasperated sigh, deflating. 'I'm _fine_ , Trevor,' she assured him and, as if to convince him, slumped against him, resting her head on his shoulder. 'Goodness, I didn't realise it's so weird to not have me hanging onto you for dear life!' she complained.

Trevor glanced down at her from the corner of his eye. She looked... strangely vulnerable. She was pouting exaggeratedly, yet her cheeks were just a little flushed and she stared off into the distance, embarrassment flickering in her sky blue eyes. The vampire hunter knitted his brows in concern.

'Sypha,' he began in a low voice, 'if we're going to keep traveling together, we're going to have to learn how to be honest about shit like this with each other, you know.'

The mage flinched and her brow twitched with annoyance as she glowered at him. Trevor breathed sharply out of amusement – she was right, who was he to lecture her, all sage-like? Well, he did have his reasons. For instance, now he could just wait for a bit, choose a quiet moment, and lead with 'Hey Sypha, about what I said earlier, about being honest...' then go on with his confession. Procrastinating as though he was, he was also working towards it, he swore.

In any case, Sypha held her tongue, staying quiet as she rested against him. And Trevor, he couldn't help but to feel strangely cozy, having her touching him again. He was becoming accustomed to it, he supposed.

Time passed slowly until they had their next break. They decided to have it when they came across a tiny, barely flowing stream trickling through a small cluster of farms with orchards and fields in addition to vast pasturelands. Seeing that the buildings were intact and that there were people outside working like Dracula's temper tantrum had never happened, the hunters were quite intrigued.

'What's this?' Sypha asked, bewildered, when they saw the farmers from afar. 'Are they really good fighters or are they just lucky?'

Trevor emitted a curious hum and narrowed his eyes. 'We'll see in a moment, I guess,' he said and, upon reaching a fork in the road, directed the geldings to take a turn to the nearest farm.

The people had indeed just been lucky, it turned out. As was told to them by a crotchety old farmer, he and the other locals had taken in people fleeing from the river town and that after that, they had been cowering in fear, waiting for monsters to come. But, they had yet to make an appearance and naturally, the people hoped that they weren't going to reach the place, either.

'So there ya have it,' the gruff old man told them with a hem, glowering at the two as he scanned them up and down. 'Now, I suggest you lot keep going – we got enough trouble with honest, hard-working folk here, we don't take in no Speakers and other _tramps_ and _beggars_ ,' he spat.

The hunters, who hadn't yet introduced themselves, shared a bemused look. When Sypha returned her attention to the man, she demonstrated a secret Speaker technique for getting alms.

'Oh, we're more than happy to keep going,' the Speaker said with feigned cheer. 'Should we get a little bit of firewood so we can cook, we might even get away from this lovely community quicker. A _lot_ quicker,' she informed the farmer.

The old man gave her a look of utter loathing, which she returned with a lovely smile tainted by a good-sized dollop of impishness. Sypha's veiled threat worked: the man brought them a bunch of firewood, then told the two to piss off already.

'Alright! Have a nice day, sir!' Sypha bid the cranky man farewell as she and Trevor walked away with their firewood.

And so, snickering to themselves, the hunters kept going past the farms until they could pull over by the road and start a fire. While they cooked and the geldings grazed nearby, Trevor kept an eye on his partner, noting that she was very focused on her task at hand. He got caught ogling with particular interest a couple of times and the annoyed look on Sypha's face said it all: she was very well aware she was under surveillance, she was just willing herself to ignore it.

Trevor chuffed and smirked to himself – she really was being just like when they had traveled with Alucard. Last time he had gotten her to relax a little by proving to her that he was nice to people who were nice to him, so what was he going to have to do to get that effect now?

This enigma was, weirdly, somewhat interesting and amusing to puzzle through, partly because of how endearingly stubborn his partner was in avoiding being touchy with him, despite them both knowing she was fighting a losing battle here. One thing that was great about this crazy woman was, as surely as she had inherited her people's uncanny ability to avoid addressing things, she had also been infected with their inability to keep their body language from betraying their true feelings. And she didn't even seem to be entirely aware of this, which was just the best.

After the two had cooked, eaten, and cleaned up after themselves, they hitched the horses again and kept driving onwards. It was Sypha's turn at the reins so she had a good excuse not to be handsy with Trevor. Did she have an excuse for why he couldn't get all cozy with her, though? A smirk played on the vampire hunter's lips as he toyed with the idea of finding out. Unfortunately, Sypha saw this and immediately sensed trouble.

'What?' she asked suspiciously.

Trevor snorted. Come to think of it, he had promised himself not to fan the flames, hadn't he? And there was a possibility that the magician truly didn't feel like being touched, too.

'Nothing,' he said and looked away.

He couldn't deny that he felt a little smug when he, from the corner of his eye, saw that Sypha shrunk just a little, seeming a tad bit flustered. Was she not used to having the tables turned on her like this? That was just delicious, if true. Definitely something he was going to explore if they were able to cut a new deal for this traveling together thing.

Sadly, he didn't have much time to cook up ways to test his hunch. It was the late afternoon when it finally happened: it started raining. It began with a soft wind-blown drizzle, like spittle coming out of God's mouth, and it had the pair looking up at the sky with an annoyed and vaguely disgusted grimace. Then, as if the heavens took offence to that, they changed their game. There was a gust of wind and soon it could not only be felt, but very briefly, its moment could be seen, racing over a slope ahead towards the wagon, in the form of an ominously fast-approaching curtain of pouring rain.

The hunters froze in their seats for a moment, just staring at this strange sight, and almost as soon as they saw it coming for them, it hit them. The rain was so heavy it roared like a torrential downpour during a summer storm, only it was freezing cold!

'Go inside!!' Sypha yelled to Trevor over the noise.

He didn't argue: he got up, ducked his head, and hurried under the canvas. The wind brought the rain in through the opening, the water sept through the wet canvas, and the holes all over the fabric were hardly helping, but it was much better in than out. Trevor wiped his face dry, or at least somewhat dry, while trying to keep his balance: the wagon was stopping. When it had done so, he turned around and saw that his partner was no longer at the driver's seat.

The Belmont heir growled in frustration – what the hell did this woman think she could do about this? And what was he going to do about it? Furrowing his brows, he looked around himself in the wagon despite knowing there wasn't anything there to help him with this.

And then, suddenly, he noticed that the light was getting dimmer. At first he thought it was just the sun being blocked by thicker clouds but no: a glance over his shoulder was enough to tell him it hadn't gotten any darker outside. Instead, something tall was starting to overshadow the wagon, which was giving the vampire hunter a feeling something magical or magic-adjacent was going on. Having a hunch that Sypha might have known what she was doing, after all, he watched and waited, soon seeing that light from above was getting blocked off, too as if the wagon had entered a tunnel. Rain stopped falling on and through the canvas as well and the sound of it faded into the distance.

'Huh,' Trevor said to himself, quite amazed. Sypha had just put a roof made of ice over them, hadn't she?

Finding himself standing in a wagon so dark, he reckoned he was in danger of stumbling over his and his partner's belongings. He began fumbling around for their lantern, only to realise that he didn't have anything to light it with. Cursing, he just grabbed the lantern and headed out, careful not to take a tumble as he stepped over the backrest of the driver's seat.

Outside, in the dim light coming from the front and the back, Trevor looked around himself and confirmed that Sypha had enclosed the wagon and the horses in an ice tunnel. The walls were thick enough that only a very diffuse, bluish light made its way through – apart from that, the only light came from each open end of the tunnel.

'Bloody hell,' he cursed, squinting as he peered at the rain.

The end of the tunnel at least another full wagon's length away from the horses, possibly to make sure the wind didn't carry the rain to them through the opening. And the tunnel was more than wide enough to house the wagon, too, and the vehicle the very middle of it, so there was room to comfortably walk past the wagon on one side instead of a tight squeeze on both sides. Not seeing his partner anywhere and not knowing what he was supposed to do with any of this space, however, Trevor just sat down at the driver's seat to wait instead of snooping around.

When the architect and builder did finally appear at the front end of the tunnel, a sheet of ice floating above her head to shield her from the rain, Trevor commented on the fine work she had done.

'You've clearly done this a few times,' he told the woman, who was turning around to toss the ice sheet back out into the rain.

'Indeed I have,' she said with a little snivel, being quite cold. She added, 'This is the kind of thing a Speaker is _supposed_ to do with elemental magic.'

As her final work, she made a hand signal and held her hands out towards the end of the tunnel. Another beginning or an ice wall formed on the ground, starting to rise and close the entrance.

'We can't light a fire in here, right?' Trevor questioned whilst she was at this. 'Aren't we going to get cold with all this ice around?'

'Not as cold as one would think,' was the mage's answer, delivered without looking at him. 'Certainly not as cold as we would be out there, wet and equally unable to light a fire.'

Trevor made a contemplative hum. Seeing a chance to give her another little poke, he snickered and went for it without even thinking.

'Pheh. Right about now, the Sypha _I_ know would insist we'll freeze to death unless we snuggle up for warmth,' he snarked.

Sypha flinched just as she finished up with the ice wall. She shot a resentful glare at her partner over her shoulder and snapped at him, 'Have you completely forgotten?' Irately, she enunciated, 'I agreed to play good Christians with you until my grandfather has _handed me over_ to you! Or are you testing me, is that it?'

Trevor balked a little. He hadn't forgotten and he wasn't testing _that_ , he'd just... Shit.

While he came to a realisation as to what his partner's beef was, Sypha looked away from him and let out a troubled sigh – she was embarrassed by her outburst. She was cold, too, making an unhappy noise as she shuddered and created a floating ball of fire for herself.

'Anyway,' she said as she turned around to face her partner. 'Mind letting the horses off their harnesses while I change my clothes?' she told more than asked, then sent a smaller flame from her ball to the lantern sitting next to Trevor on the driver's seat. 'It was so windy, I might as well not have bothered trying to shield myself.'

Sheepishly, Trevor glanced down at the now lit lantern. 'Sure,' he grunted and grabbed it, then got up.

He got down from the wagon and walked towards the horses while the magician walked towards the wagon. They had to squeeze past each other on the way to their respective destinations and during this, Trevor ogled at the woman's expression: she was a little red in the face and looked annoyed, very intent on not looking back at him. Her shoulders were squared, making her look rather guarded. Despite that, the vampire hunter could feel a spark between them, just a bit of reluctance to step away from each other.

When the two parted ways, then, Trevor was left kind of stumped. He glanced behind his shoulder, catching a glimpse of his partner's back as she disappeared into the wagon, then for a moment, he just stared at where he had lost sight of her, thinking.

He wasn't sure what he could have said for himself. He had just assumed that he was well within the realm of casual friendly Speaker touchiness, he supposed. He hadn't realised she would get all hot and bothered by something as minor as his casual prodding and joking. Kind of annoying how she could apparently swing from one extreme to the other like that, going from gleefully touchy-feely like she had been at the castle to outright resenting being touched.

On the other hand, this all made a goofy grin tug at the corner of Trevor's mouth. He really hadn't done much, yet Sypha's reaction had looked to him as if he had relentlessly flirted with her all day. Quite like he had rudely occupied much of her mind without her permission.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No fuck you I'm never ditching hog farmer Alucard. If I ever write an Alucard centric anything you can bet it's going to be about him discovering the joys and horrors of pig ownership. 
> 
> Also, in the earliest versions of this fic Trevor got his full Season 3 outfit here too but it felt redundant so it got nixed. Besides, I prefer the Squall Leonhart look and hatchet shoulder Trevor to Fire Nation Trevor anyway.
> 
> (Finally, if you don't know just how stupidly large testicles pigs have but don't want "pig testicles" in your search history, google "shitnuts" and go to images.)


End file.
